Chapter 1: Introducing Magento

What is Magento
Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. With Magento, never feel trapped in your eCommerce solution again.
Since it is open-source, Magento‘s code is available free for download. Just go to www.magentocommerce.com/download to download your copy today. In this guide we will introduce key concepts and walk you through setting up your Magento store, from installing Magento, to entering products.
Elements and Terminologies of Magento Sites
Magento is made up of a few different elements which define the functionality, design and business logic of the site. In order to follow along with the User Guide it is crucial that you have a good grasp of the terminologies used to describe these elements of the Magento system. The terminologies introduced in this chapter are most likely new territory for you, so take your time and read through them thoroughly. But most importantly, don‘t be discouraged if you can‘t fully grasp the concept of all these new terminologies – This chapter merely serves to introduce them, and further chapters will dig deeper into, and expand upon, these simple definitions.
Websites and Stores
One of the most powerful features of Magento is the ability to manage multiple websites and stores from one back-end. This allows store owners to manage stores on different URLs, display the same products in different languages on the same URL, along with a variety of other setups. If you will only be selling your products from one URL in one language you will not need to use this functionality, but the ability to easily expand into additional languages makes Magento scalable as your business grows out of your home market.
Websites
A website is made up of one or more stores which share the same customer information, order information and shopping cart. This is a very broad term that can be adopted to define the unique needs of individual merchants.
Stores
Stores can be setup in a variety of ways, but remember that if they are part of the same website they will share certain information.

Store Views
Store Views are mainly used for different languages, so if you wanted to have a store displayed in English and Spanish, for example, you could create the store once and create two different store views for that store. A few scenarios to define the different uses of website and store are as follows:
Scenario 1: One Website with multiple stores
Scenario 2: Two Stores with two store views each
Scenario 3: One Website with one store and one store view The most common setup will be a one website and one store setup, but understanding the functionality of multiple websites and stores will help you understand why certain values are