If you’re not familiar, Magento is a fresh and promising ecommerce solution. A leading feature of the software is the core is 100% open source. Of course there are many plugins, themes and other customization features which range in price from the altruistic ‘free’ to the enterprising ‘thousands of dollars’. But in the end, if you’re looking for a robust ecommerce solution and aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty, look no further than Magento Commerce.

This is a hefty book, weighing in at 300 pages. I’ve read the official Magento User Guide, and although it is informative, I feel that it is somewhat dry. I’m eager to flip through the ebook they sent me to see if there are any ‘between the lines’ tips and tricks to liven up a Magento project I’m working on.

At first glance, the table of contents definitely seems to focus on the GTD side of things. For instance, the first chapter is all about installing Magento.

This chapter is written especially for you, if you are:

• Installing Magento on your own
• Using a low-cost, commonly available hosting service
• Familiar with putting files up on a web server, but that is the limit of your technical knowledge
• Willing to ask your hosting service’s technical support some simple and specific “Yes/No” questions about their setup
• Eager to get your store up and running as fast as possible

Even if you own a server, or are very technical, this chapter is still worth reading. It can
save you time by helping you to avoid problems while installing Magento.

Sidenote: I highly suggest getting familiar with how Magento works. This isn’t WordPress.

So I’ll be reading the book and applying the knowledge within. Eventually I’ll gather my notes into coherent form and publish them as an official review right here. Until then, your homework is to read about how Magento can work for your business. If you’re wanting to sell online, I really do recommend it.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to create a new email template in Magento. Specifically, you’ll create the email that your visitors will receive when they sign up for your newsletter.

Requirements

• Access to your website’s Magento admin panel
• A little knowledge of how HTML emails work
• This tutorial

Step One: Create the Template

I said you need to know a little about how to create an HTML email, but since Magento comes with many templates you can kind of get away without the knowledge at first.

• Log into your admin panel and navigate to System > Transactional Emails.
• Click the ‘Add New Template’ button on the top right.
• Choose one of the default templates from the first drop down box.

In this tutorial we’ll be using the ‘Newsletter subscription confirmation’ template. This would typically be the first email your visitors would receive so I figured it would be a good choice. Choose the locale of course, then click the ‘Load Template’ button.

This will load the appropriate template which in this example is located in the /app/code/locale/en_US/template/email/ directory. The filename is ‘account_new_confirmation.html’. As you can see, it is very easy to alter the templates for international support. You can leave most of the template as they have presented it. I’ve changed the email addresses, the phone number, the store name and the source URL for the logo.

Back in the admin panel, give your template a name. To keep things simple, I’ve used ‘Newsletter Subscription Confirmation’ for the name and the subject. Now here’s where you can modify the template to suit your specific needs. One of the key features of Magento is the ability to have multiple stores within one installation. Therefore you can load the same template in the first half of this step, then modify it for each store in the second half.

Click the ‘Save Template’ button on the top right and you’ll see your new template in the list of Transactional Emails. Now lets move on to implementing it into your site.

Step Two: Using Your Template

From the top horizontal menu, navigate to System > Configuration.

Scroll down to the Customers section on the left menu and select Newsletter.

In the drop down box for Confirmation Email Template, choose the new template you just created. The option just above it should be set to Customer Support. Click the ‘Save Config’ button on the top right and you’re done.

Step Three: Testing Your Template

Now navigate to the public version of your site to the Newsletter box.

Type in your email and click ‘Subscribe’. Sync your email client and you should see a new email from ‘[Site Name] – Customer Support’ with the subject of ‘Newsletter subscription confirmation’.

Check all the text, make sure the logo shows up and the email addresses and phone number is correct. Make any changes back in the admin at System > Transactional Emails (second image in step one).

Conclusion

Magento Commerce, the open source ecommerce solution, can be very intimidating to those of us coming from WordPress. Its configuration options are very intricate, allowing you to customize designs, layouts and almost every other piece of the site on a per-page basis. Hopefully I’ve shared some useful knowledge on how to create a new email template in Magento.

Make sure you test your emails extensively. They are acting as your host/hostess, concierge and valet. You want them to be as professional as possible. No typos, easily readable text, and please, be sure to quadruple check your email address and phone number.

A key nugget to remember about HTML emails is you have to put your CSS styling inline. You can’t reference an external CSS file or even have it in the HEAD. All HTML emails are contained within the BODY tag. Also, don’t even try using DIVs for your layout. Go old school. Bring out the TABLE tag and party like its 1999. Just look at the example templates they have to get a feel of what is or isn’t acceptable. If there’s enough interest, I’ll write a post on my experience with HTML emails.

I will be adding more quick tutorials like this for Magento as I wade through their user guide and forum. Please feel free to comment or ask a question in the form below.