Create a Magento Web Store

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Once you have completed the Magento installation, you can proceed with the configuration of your web site. In this article we have briefed the basic options in Magento, which will help you set up your web store. Below you can find the following topics:

• Log into Magento;
• Magento System Configuration;
• Manage categories in Magento;
• Manage products in Magento;
• Magento catalog;
• Promotions in Magento;
• Magento reports;
• Magento Base URL;

By default the main page looks as follows:

Log into Magento Admin Area

In order to start populating your web site with content, you need to navigate to the Magento's admin area:

System Configuration

Log in with the details entered during the script installation and navigate to System -> Configuration. Here you can configure the script options per your personal needs. Most options are self-explanatory:

Magento Catalog

From the Catalog category you can also manage the attributes, rewrite URLs for the products, perform searches, edit tags, generate a GoogleMap and manage reviews and ratings:

Promotions in Magento

From the Promotions section you can set promotions, define the rules for them and the customers' groups for which the promotions are valid:

Magento Reports

Multiple comprehensive statistics and reports can be obtained at the Magento admin area -> Reports.

Magento Base URL

If you want to configure Magento to work with another domain, you can do this by changing the Magento Base URL option in the admin area. To do this, go to your Magento admin area > System > Configuration and click Web on the left menu. Click the Unsecure option and then edit the Base URL field to configure the URL that will be used for normal (HTTP) connections.

To configure the URL for secure (HTTPS) connections, click the Secure option and then edit the Base URL field. Note that in order to use HTTPS connections for  your domain without receiving a warning about the SSL, you need to buy a private SSL certificate.