Magento is an open source script for your e-commerce store

Magento is an open source e-commerce system that runs on most web-hosting services. It is one of the most powerful, flexible, and customizable e-commerce systems at your disposal. It is also the fastest-growing e-commerce system available on the market.

Magento offers you an extensive suite of powerful tools for creating and managing an online store. As your online store grows, you can be sure that this robust e-commerce system will handle your needs. However, getting started with Magento can be difficult without the right guidance. This book provides that guidance in the form of a step-by-step approach to build a simple and effective online store. As you follow along with the guided lessons, you will see how an online coffee store is created from the ground up. This book will do more than just show you what you need to do when you build your store. We will discuss why we choose certain options and how to make the best decisions when faced with Magento's many options.

Magento enables you to create several stores that you can control from the same
administrative interface. For example, you could have a discount store, a retail store, and a wholesale store—all controlled from the same Magento installation. To make the administration even easier, these stores can share payment and customer information. Although multiple storefronts are beyond the scope of this book, what you learn about setting up a single store will be applicable to any storefronts that you decide to add later.

Although Magento enables you to accept payment in multiple currencies, this book shows you how to create a store that accepts a single currency. However, the payment methods that you set up for the single currency can also be used for multiple currencies if you decide to expand your store in that direction.