You might wonder what is Magento Connect.

In fact, you can install different applications in Magento thanks to a web based interface accessible through the admin panel.

Most of extensions are directly hosted on the Magento website as a PEAR server. Wow what does it mean? It just mean that you do not have to go through your FTP to install additionnal stuff on your website. This is crazy: you just have to enter the right URL of the right module and then it will does everything by itself.

Any community member can upload a module through the website and is made available once confirmed by a member of the Magento team. Modules are installed by entering a module key, available on the module page, into the web based interface.

You can find 3 different type of modules on the Magento website to push on your website:

• Core Modules
• Community Modules
• Commercial Modules

The two first can be installed directly with the Magento Connect area in your admin panel. But you have to pay to use commercial modules.

There is a page providing price information and a link to an external website.

Magento is a very powerful tool and thus requires some minimum configuration.

Here is all you need to have:

Apache:

• Apache 1.3, 2.0, or 2.2

PHP Compatibility:

• PHP 5.3

Required PHP extensions:

• PDO_MySQL;
• simplexml;
• mcrypt;
• hash;
• GD;
• DOM;
• iconv;
• SOAP (if Webservices API is to be used);
• Safe_mode off;
• Memory_limit no less than 256Mb (preferably 512Mb).

MySQL:

• 4.1.20 or newer;
• InnoDB storage engine.

SSL:

• If HTTPS is used to work in the admin, SSL certificate should be valid. Self-signed SSL certificates are not supported.

If everything looks chinese for you, you might want to speak about it to your referrer. He must know about it. This is important because most of the domain name when you buy them are not configured to support Magento.
Indeed, you have to ask your referrer to change the basic configuration so everything works fine.

So make sure you keep this list and use it when necessary.

Also, later when you will have installed Magento, you will be willing to install additionnal extensions.

No worries about that, you do not need any requirement for that: you’ll have to use Magento Connect. This is so easy you won’t believe it!

Magento is an open-source ecommerce CMS (content management system) created the March 31, 2008. The name of the company who created it is Varien, building on components of the Zend Framework. 

Magento is an open-source CMS available under the Open Software License version 3.0. Since version 1.1.7 some parts are licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0: it means you have to pay to use them but still can see everything about them. Most of the people think open-source means free. It is often the case but sometimes you have to pay to use an open-source software. Anyway, the costs are generally just to pay for the time of the developpers and not to make tons of benefits.

“Magento Enterprise Edition, a paid for version of Magento aimed at larger companies, was launched on April 15, 2009. This version provides a service agreement with Varien and starts at $11,125 USD per year.” says Wikipedia but I never had the opportunity to use it. Maybe you had? Let me know!