First log in to your Magento backend panel (commonly found at www.yourdomain.com/admin). Once logged in click on Catalog -> Manage Categories to see the following page. As you can see in the left hand panel there are a number of categories in my default installation already. Clicking on any of these in the tree will load the category details in the right hand panel.

Now to add a new sub category you first need to decide where in the tree it is to appear. Do this by looking for its parent category. For example, assuming the following structure:

If you wanted to add a new type of electronics subcategory (to go alongside Cell Phones, Cameras and Computers) you would select Electronics in the structure above. Once this is selected you click the Add Subcategory button above to add your new subcategory.

Now to fill in the details. There is only one required field that you need to fill in when adding a new category, that is the category title. The other fields are either optional or use sensible defaults to speed up the process.

Click Save and you’re done. See, it wasn’t that hard after all.

In future posts we will be exploring the options available when adding products to your store, as well as some of the more complex areas of the Magento admin panel.

In addition some useful Safari properties allow us to link directly to a Google Map of our office and have the iPhone application load, making it easier for you all to find us! Visitors can also call us directly from the site without having to remember our telephone number.

The main website is built on top of the industry standard Zend Framework, so the iPhone detection was a simple as creating a custom front controller plugin. By examining the user agent of the device we can determine if the user is using an iPhone or iPod Touch and transparently redirect them to the iPhone version of the website.

Although the site has only just gone live we already have a huge list of ideas for the next version including full integration with our custom CMS. This will allow visitors to browse our new blog posts and portfolio items directly from the device with some fancy styling thrown in for good measure!

If you’re interested in an iPhone version of your website please get in touch to discuss your requirements.

Magento is an open source e-commerce platform with an impressive feature set out of the box and is built using the industry standard Zend Framework. The community edition of Magento is free to use but for larger stores there is an enterprise edition available with an expanded feature set and a support agreement with the developers of Magento.

Why use Magento?

Magento has an impressive feature set out of the box. Some of the available features include:

• support for multiple currencies / stores
• support for multiple payment providers
• related products
• discount codes

In addition if you find a feature you need that is not in the box there are a large amount of both free and commercial extensions that can be installed to bolt on new functionality to your store.

Magento may not be suitable for all projects however. As with all off the shelf software it relies upon the user changing their working patterns to match the software, rather than the software working the way you want to work. However for start ups or businesses on a budget it’s a cost effective way of getting your shop up and running as quickly as possible.

What can Fluid do for you?

Here at Fluid we have a number of Magento projects under our belt and depending on your budget we can provide anything from a simple installation to a full custom design for your store. We have also worked on extending Magento with custom functionality – whatever your imagination can think of we can provide it. Each new Magento store needs skinning to make your store stand out from everyone else, so it’s never a simple case of software installation. Think of Magento as a basic structure which needs adding to and modifying…

If you are interested in any of our Magento services get in touch today to discuss your requirements in more detail.

If you haven’t begun to already now is the time to get to grips with the changes in this version. See the official upgrade guide for more information.

The Community Edition is still available for free and will continue to be available and supported. Also it should be noted that Magento Commerce has an active community of contributors out there so it wouldn’t surprise me if enterprise level features appear by way of add on modules very soon.

For more information please read the official announcement

If you would like more information check out the Protx Forum

For those of you who don’t know Magentocommerce is an open source e-commerce platform built on top of the Zend Framework. It’s not just a technical toy though – it has some really cool features that are useful for any e-commerce project as well as an active community of template designers & developers to rely upon for advice. There are also commercial support packages available if required.

Interested? Get to the website and have a look for yourself!

http://www.magentocommerce.com/