Magento 1.3 Theme Design

Customize the appearance of your Magento e-commerce store with Magento's powerful theming engine

• Give your Magento stores a unique branded look and feel by creating your own Magento themes
• Use design techniques to reinforce your brand message and increase sales
• Customise your Magento theme's look, feel, layout, and features
• Promote and improve your Magento store with the use of social media such as Twitter, social bookmarks, and so on
• Ideas and examples for defining a good print stylesheet
• Packed with essential hints and tips for effective Magento web design

In Detail

Magento is the hottest and most powerful e-commerce software around and it has gained massive popularity in a short period. By using Magento's powerful theming engine, you can control the look, content, and functionality, and easily launch a flexible e-commerce web site. However, because of its powerful features, developing Magento themes is easier said than done.

Magento 1.3 Theme Design covers everything you need to build effective, attractive themes for your Magento store. You will learn how the theming system works, how to build your own look on top of the Magento Blank Theme, how to give different looks to different parts of your store, and much more.

We start off by introducing you to Magento and its basic themes and then take you through the benefits of changing your store's theme. We then move on to the actual Magento theme design, where you will learn the basics, such as changing the logo, color scheme, and so on. Next, we take a look at more advance tasks where you will learn theme layouts. You will then prepare a Magento theme from scratch and also take a look at Magento templates and layouts. You will also learn how to promote and improve your Magento store with the use of social media such as Twitter, social bookmarks, and so on and how to define a good print style. Finally, you will learn Magento Theme Deployment in detail.

What you will learn from this book?

• Create a custom theme that gives a unique branded look and feel to your Magento stores
• Edit an existing Magento theme to satisfy your business needs
• Give different looks to different parts of your store
• Tricks and tips for making your Magento theme design easier
• Style your store ready for printing by defining a good print layout
• Share your Magento theme with others in the community through Magento Connect extensions
• Embed social media tools to promote and improve your Magento store
• Deploy your new Magento theme to your store
• Create and use non-default Magento Themes
• Discover the basis of Magento themes: templates, skins, and layout

Approach

Magento 1.3 Theme Design is a step-by-step guide to creating custom themes for Magento. The author's experience in Magento theming enables him to design a book that lessens the steep learning curve associated with Magento theming. The author uses code examples and ideas that facilitate learning and make Magento theme development a great learning experience.

Who this book is written for?

Magento 1.3 Theme Design is written for those who are familiar with Magento and know the Magento basics and now want to customize the look and feel. The book assumes familiarity with CSS and (X)HTML. The book is also aimed at store owners who want to customize their e-commerce store and web designers who want to sell their custom-made Magento themes. Seasoned theme designers will find very useful tips and hints in this book.

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