Introducing the Frontend
Figure 34. Ratings and Reviews
The number of stars indicates the satisfaction rating. You can click on the Review(s) link to display
the actual textual reviews provided by customers. For more details, see “Managing Ratings and
Reviews”, page 324.
Community Polls
Each web store can provide a Community Poll, as shown in Figure 35. For more details, see
“Managing Polls,” page 329.
Figure 35. Community Poll
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Introducing the Backend
3 Introducing the Backend
In order to familiarize you with the features of the backend, this chapter describes, at a high level, the ongoing management tasks that you can perform in the backend while running your Magento web store on a day-to-day basis.
See “Accessing the Backend,” page 37, for details on logging in to your store’s backend.
See “Setting Up Your Catalog,” page 53, for a full description of how to set up your catalog. Each of the
subsequent chapters features a description of the other aspects of customizing your backend.
3.1 Understanding Scope
Magento enables you to organize your operations into multiple websites, stores, and store
views. (See “Store Hierarchy,” page 39, for descriptions of these terms.) Many of the
configuration pages in the backend enable you to select the website, store, or store view that you want your configuration changes to apply to. Selecting the website, store, or store view is known as selecting the
scope
of your changes.
To select the scope for configuration changes, use the Current Configuration Scope drop-
down menu in the upper left corner of the configuration page, as shown in Figure 36.
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Figure 36. Selecting Configuration Scope
If you select Default Config, the option choices you make are applied as default values for all websites, stores, and store views.
On the configuration pages, you will see scope indicators to the right of each option. These indicate the lowest level of the hierarchy at which you can set the value of these options. For example, the value of the Default Display Currency option may be set at the default (global) level, but can be overridden at the store view level, as indicated by the “[STORE VIEW]” indicator for that option (see
Figure 37).
Introducing the Backend
Figure 37. Scope Indicators
3.2 Managing Administrator Messages
When you log in to the backend, any new messages are displayed in a pop-up box. Typically, these messages are notifications of new Magento or extension releases. You can manage these messages much like you would manage your email.
To display all the messages in your inbox:
Click the Go to messages inbox on the top right of the page. The Messages Inbox page is displayed,
which provides standard message handling features (see Figure 38).
Figure 38. Messages Inbox Page
You can mark selected messages as Read so that they do not appear again when you log in. You can also Remove marked messages so that they are permanently deleted.
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