PART- 1: Centre Point of Magento development guide line. Pre-Launch Checklist

Today I am going to show you a new experience and information regarding how to development a magento website, how to add base URL, favicon, HTML header, how to place image of product, client contact information and how to manage transactional emails.

Taking any website live can be a very stressful time as a developer. Your client is pushing to go live as soon as possible and the pressure can make it easy to forget steps. I’ve compiled some tips and tricks that I have picked up on Mean bee’s projects for moving your Magento store development to production.

Base URLs

These are URLs that are stored in the database table core config data but can also be accessed through the admin interface if you have access to it: System ? Configuration? Web. When you move the site, they will need to be updated otherwise all URLs will be referring back to the staging site. P.S. Don’t forget the trailing forward slash!

Favicon- Magento can be hard work at times, but that does not mean you can get away with making a fool out of yourself by forgetting to create a favicon.

HTML Head- Do not leave the original settings in the HTML head. You should change the title and set the meta description and keywords, these are important for SEO. System? Configuration? General? Design? HTML Head.

Placeholder Images- These are the images shown when a product does not have its own image. Create a default set for your site and place them in: catalog/products/placeholder/image.jpg, catalog/products/placeholder/small_image.jpg and catalog/products/placeholder/thumbnail.jpg. Alternatively they can be uploaded in admin: System ? Configuration? Catalog? Catalog? Product Image Placeholders.

Contact Information- Ensure all the store information and email addresses are set. You will be able to find these in System ? Configuration ? General and System ? Configuration ? Store Email Addresses.

Transactional Emails- Transactional emails use a different logo to the default one. Make sure that the image that you want to use is saved in your theme directory as logo_email.gif.

Most of the emails will now be sorted due to using the configuration that you have already set. However, there are a couple of templates that as of version 1.4.1.1 still use hard coded values so it’s necessary to go in to these and make some changes manually. To save you some time, the email templates that are affected are:

o Newsletter subscription confirmation – “Demo Store”

o New account confirmation key – “Demo Store”

o New password – “Demo Store”

o Share Wishlist – “Demo Store”

o New Order – “PST”

Plain-text Passwords in Emails are Evil- It really gripes me when websites send out plain-text passwords in emails. Unfortunately, Magento does this as soon as you sign up for an account. So, I would personally recommend going into the transaction email for account confirmation and replace the password with some holding text e.g. “********”. If people are interested in a “click-to-reset” password recovery module for Magento For security, it is best to change the URL that the admin interface resides on. This can be set in System ? Configuration ? Advanced ? Admin ? Admin Base URL.