Thursday 5 July 2012

How to install Magento extensions and modules

How to install Magento extensions and modules

Magento template is the most popular template to use nowadays as the ultimate ecommerce solution. Basically, it has everything that a web owner needs to operate a good website. Based on Open Source project, the Magento template is free to use and easy to modify. In general, it is quite easy to install, remove some features of the template, add more extensions, widgets.

Web owners can also take advantage of the additional plugins and themes, which they can buy from online store about themes for Magento template. These themes are quite easy to install, usually web owners just have to upload the files to the host and refresh for the changes to apply.

In this article, we will show you some easy ways to install the Extensions on the Magento template. The steps are similar to install the modules and Widgets.
The easiest way to install these components is to use the tool called the Magento Connect. This tool is quite easy to use, as you just need to specify the extensions you are going to install and it will do the rest for you.

The second way is to use the CMS tool, which is integrated in the Magento Template. This tool is usually used to enable or disable some certain parts of the Magento template. As an Admin, you can use this tool to install the new extensions for your Magento website. You can access this tool in the Menu box in the Root of your website.

The last way is to use SHELL or PEAR command line. This method is somehow the most difficult and advanced method, which is ideal choice for web programmer. Use these commands to install the new extensions:

# set preferred stability for installed/upgraded packages (alpha,beta,stable):
./pear config-set preferred_state beta

# initial installation from downloader package:
./pear mage-setup .
./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest

# install extension: (paste the extension key in front of ./pear install "Magento extension key"
./pear install magento-community/Your_Extension_Key

# list available upgrades
./pear list-upgrades

# upgrade a package
./pear upgrade magento-core/Mage_Package

# uninstall a package

./pear uninstall magento-community/Unwanted_Package

About the extensions and modules, there are various places to find. The main features of these are to make the web managing job becomes easier. Some extensions also allows web owners to cut off the time by remove some content which is unrelated or not necessary. The extensions sometimes are quite useful to add more features to the website.

We hope this short article has shown you some ways to install and modify the Magento template. Although this template is easy to learn, it take some time to become good at it.