Magento: Beginner's Guide

I thought this was a good book that walks you through setting up a Magento store. It could of been a lot longer because there is a lot to learn when it comes to Magento. I feel like the book shows you almost the bare minimum to get started and not much more. Maybe that was the objective of the book. There were several frustrating things that I had to figure out on my own that I wish had been in the book such as changing the demo store logo in the automated emails that are sent to customers. I also wish there had been a step by step to setting up payment processing with pay pal. Even though I had some minor complaints, I don't think I could have done it without this book. There are so few books out there on Magento which is really a shame since it's such a great product. If you are going to be using Magento I definitely recommend this book. Maybe a better one will come out eventually, but for now this is the best there is.

I was so excited to receive this book because I am a true beginner with Magento and was not finding good info on how to start with this program. I found the book to be easy to understand and read but it was written in 2009 and about 50% of the items in the updated version of MagentoGo was not covered in the book. I found myself having to sort of translate the old book into the new interface and also noticed that many items were not addressed at all. Much of the layout and organization in the software is different than the book which frustrated me on top of having to learn about this new E-commerce solution.Unfortunately, Packt has not put out an updated book and there is virtually no one else with a beginners book aside from the users manual which is not as user friendly.

The book is very good as a beginners guide on how to enter items into Magento and do the bare basics to get the default store running. I hoped it would go further in explication, but as the book title is beginner guide. Overall the book is very good for starting in Magento.

this book does what it promise: it's a beginner guide, at the and of whitch you've created your first e-commerce site.For non-american readers sounds much strange the choiche they made to produce examples using a store selling coffee, wouldn't be better and clearer to choose a store selling cloths or technologies ? ?

It's not for developers, it's for the lay person who can't figure out which configuration options are where in the admin panel. Magento requires a patient & versed PHP developer to make even the slightest edit from its default which is always insufficient, so this book is useless for much more than where to click in admin panel. I say this as a former Magento developer.

Good reference book for beginners. I needed something that had a bit more. Things like added templates that aren't on the Magento store and have to be upload through ftp ect are not here

The book was so boring I had trouble staying awake while reading it. I learned that it's easier to get information via YouTube videos. Quick referencing is also very difficult with this book. The book does contain the information it needs to contain though. That's why I gave it two stars.

I know just enough in web design to get extremely frustrated. This is really written well as a how to book. Each chapter is a step in the process from start to finish. You can literally, start on page one and follow to end and have a fully functional site.

First things first and credit where credit is due - this book is strong on how to put products into you site and how to arrange the database. This is no mean feat as it's possibly the most complicated aspect of building an e-commerce site and the one that can be the difference between a good site and a REALLY good one. However where this book really comes up short is on customisation. After you've dealt with getting the products into the store the next single most important thing is to give your store its own personality. I do happen to know that Magento design, for most people, is about themes. The word 'themes' isn't even in the index. Hilariously the relevant chapter on customisation is called 'Minimum customisation of your stores appearance'. Minimum .... I should Coco. For example the entry for the homepage (which this book rather irritatingly calls the Frontpage - perhaps an Americanism?) consists of just over 2 lines which basically says: 'Here's the front page' ...... er .... that's it? The bottom half of the page is completely blank, I can only guess the printers have left off a few paragraphs. I could go on. Basically, although the book has some merit it absolutely does not justify the £20 + price. For £20 I don't want to have to constantly refer to the Magento Help pages, You Tube videos and forums. I bought this book precisely to avoid this. So anyhow, now I'm off to, er, well Maganto Help pages, You Tube videos and forums and I'm twenty quid worse off.

A bit too basic for me, but helpful in certain places, useful for getting started with Magento as it it is a very complex system.

This book is okay, but I wish they could have combined the two William Rice books and the developer's guide into one book. There isn't enough here to justify the price. They could have done a Magento Complete Book and it wouldn't have been much longer than this and would have been a much better value.