Magento

The Add Store Code to Urls option inserts the current store code into each URL (read more about multiple websites and stores). For a store view with the code “store2en” the URL will have the format:

http://www.domain.com/magento/index.php/store2en/url-identifier

Note: If you use web server rewrites, the “index.php” filename will be hidden.

Each page in a Magento website is generated starting with the same main PHP script. This file is called index.php and normally resides in the root folder of the website. In order to run this script for each page, each Magento URL typically looks like this:

 http://www.domain.com/magento/index.php/storeview/url-identifier

Using a technique called web server rewrites, Magento can hide the file name portion of the URL, making the URL look like this:

 http://www.domain.com/magento/storeview/url-identifier

To hide the “index.php” part of the URL is common practice in most PHP-based content management systems. It has no measureable effect on the usability or performance of your website and will not affect your website’s ranking in the search engines.

Magento can force the browser to use SSL encryption both in its frontend and backend. If you install an SSL certificate for your domain name, you can request that Magento uses encrypted “https” URLs instead of unencrypted “http” URLs in the frontend (the store itself) and/or in the backend Admin system. These settings are located at the bottom of the “Secure” section of this page.

The Base URL fields should contain the full address to the root Magento folder for the website (where the index.php file is located). The URL should include a trailing slash.

 http://www.domain.com/magento/

The Base Link URL typically points to the same folder. A simple way to refererence the base URL is

 {{unsecure_base_url}}

for the unencrypted URL in the Unsecure section, and

 {{secure_base_url}}

in the Secure section.

The Base Skin URL points to the folder where the skin for this website is located. By default, this folder is called “skin”. For the Unsecure URL, you can designate this folder using

 {{unsecure_base_url}}skin/

If you are running multiple sites off the same Magento folder structure, you may want to use different skin folders for each site, e.g. to use a different layout for each site. Using a different folder is also useful if you want to store your skins outside the Magento folder.

The Base Media URL points to the folder where the catalog images for this website are located. By default, this folder is called “media”. For the Unsecure URL, you can designate this folder using

 {{unsecure_base_url}}media/

If you are running multiple sites off the same Magento folder structure, you may want to use different media folders for each site, e.g. if you want the ability to backup and restore them separately. Using a different folder is also useful if you want to store your images outside the Magento folder.

The Base JavaScript URL points to the folder where the JavaScript scripts for this website are located. By default, this folder is called “js”. For the Unsecure URL, you can designate this folder using

 {{unsecure_base_url}}js/

If you are running multiple sites off the same Magento folder structure, you may want to use different JavaScript folders for each site, e.g. if you want the ability to update them separately. Using a different folder is also useful if you want to store your scripts outside the Magento folder.

This section is used to specify the pages in Magento’s own content management system (CMS) that are used for the starting page of the website, and for “page not found” errors (read more about the Magento CMS).

The Default web url designates the page that is loaded for the base URL, i.e. when the URL does not contain a URL identifier. The default valure is

 cms

which leaves it up to the Magento CMS to select and display the Home page for the website. When you have created this page in the CMS portion of the Admin, you select it with the CMS Home Page setting.

If you want the website to start by showing a blog, and you have installed this blog in a folder called “magento/blog/”, you can set the Default web url to

 blog

The Default no-route url contains the URL of the page you want loaded into the browser if an http 404 “not found” error occurs. The default value is

 cms/index/noRoute

which leaves it up to the Magento CMS to select and display the “not found” page for the website. When you have created this page in the CMS portion of the Admin, you select it with the CMS No Route Page setting.

“Breadcrumbs” (also called “you-are-here” lines) appear by default on each catalog page in Magento:

 Home / Electronics / Cameras / Accessories

If you want similar breadcrumbs to appear in the pages that you have made yourself using the Magento CMS, select Yes for the Show breadcrumbs for CMS pages setting. The breadcrumb for a CMS page contains its Title, e.g.

 Home / About us

Magento can ensure that each IP address only has one vote in each of your polls (read more about polls). Setting the Disallow voting in a poll multiple times from same IP-address option to Yes will limit each IP address to only one vote in each poll.

Note that multiple users may have legitimate reasons to share the same IP address, e.g. by using the same computer to access your site or by using an IP sharing setup such as a home router.

Magento uses cookies to keep track of each visitor and to link them to their shopping cart. The “Session cookie management” settings correspond to the parameters of the PHP Setcookie function.

The Cookie path allows you to make Magento cookies available in other directories (folder paths) than the current. If you want to make cookies available anywhere in a site you should set this value to a single forward slash:

 /

The Cookie Domain is mainly used to control whether cookies will be visible in subdomains (e.g. http://subdomain.domain.com/ or not. To ensure that cookies are available in all your subdomains, enter your domain name prefixed with a period:

 .domain.com

The Cookie Lifetime setting controls when the browser deletes the Magento cookies automatically. The default value is 3600 which means that the cookies remain in the browser for one hour (60 minutes * 60 seconds) unless the browser deletes the cookies for some other reason.

Note: Magento requires the user’s browser to accept its cookies. Using cookies may conflict with the browser’s privacy settings. You may be forced to provide a compact privacy policy to the browser, or to set the Cookie Lifetime to 0 to ensure that your cookies disappear with the browser session.