Introduction
Magento is an open-source e-commerce system that allows users to manage an online storefront. It is one of the most popular e-commerce solutions — 30% of all e-commerce solutions use Magento. Stack Harbor has made it simple for you to deploy a Magento store using our turnkey Stacks. We’ll show you how to get started with the turnkey application and start selling your wares online.
Accessing Your Application
Once your Stack is built, you’ll want to proceed to your storefront using your browser. The installation of Magento on your Stack uses self-signed SSL certificates in order to encrypt your connection between your browser and the server. If you proceed to http://your_ip_address, you’ll be shown your Magento storefront. Your browser might complain that the connection is not trusted — this is because browsers come preinstalled with SSL certificates signed by trusted authorities. This does not mean that your application is not secure. However, you should probably purchase an SSL certificate from a certificate signing authority (CSA) and install it on your Stack if you don’t want your customers to see the same scary message. Since you’re hosting your Magento application on your own Stack, you’ll also be able to customize and style the storefront to your desire.
Before you start directing customers to your site, you’ll need to actually need to add items! Point your browser to https://your_ip_address/index.php/admin, replacing your_ip_address with the public IP address of your Stack. You’ll be shown the gateway into the administrative interface of your Magento application. In order to authenticate with the server, you’ll need to SSH into your Stack and acquire the admin access credentials. If you don’t know how to access your Stack using SSH, check out our detailed tutorial.
Once you’ve logged into your Stack using SSH, pay attention to the information that is logged to your terminal upon login. This is called the message of the day (MOTD) and contains a lot of sensitive information pertaining to your Magento installation. We highly recommend you take note of all the credentials echoed here and run rm -f /etc/motd which will remove message of the day permanently. Be sure you note down the passwords before you run the command or your passwords will be lost forever!
Use the first set of credentials to log into the administrative interface of your Magento application. If everything is set up correctly, you will be shown a dashboard from which you will be able to perform many of the tasks necessary to run a successful online store.
Final Words
Congratulations! You’re ready to start selling your product and developing your Magento Stack, customized to your needs. For more information about developing extensions on top of your existing Magento application, check out the documentation here. Additionally, check out the “Getting Started” guide distributed by Magento to explore the full power of Magento. From all of us here at Stack Harbor, ahoy!