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development-practices-in-magento
  • Industry: Magento
  • Timeline: Mar 13, 2017
  • Writer: Saima Naz

Best Development Practices In Magento For Building Attractive Store

Magento e-commerce developers who are new to the platform may encounter common challenges during development. Building an attractive and high-performing online store becomes much easier when you follow proven development practices and leverage professional Web App Development Services for complex projects. This article covers practical tips for Magento developers to avoid common mistakes, improve development efficiency, and implement effective Magento development services strategies that contribute to a better shopping experience.

Key Takeaways:

  • Building with Magento best practices in mind helps developers build attractive, scalable, and high-performing ecommerce stores while avoiding common implementation mistakes.
  • Proper configuration, debugging tools, SEO settings, and development environments simplify the development process and boost how well your store performs.
  • Using the right tools and following Magento’s architecture standards makes your online store easier to maintain and more efficient over time.

Before moving on, you have to make sure that you have Magento installed on your system. Let us see some cool tricks and tips for Magento ecommerce developers so that you can be a Magento geek too.

Setting up Magento (BASIC STEPS)

Ecommerce web design with Magento is very comfortable. For that, first of all, you have to set up Magento on your system so that you can further develop an e-commerce website with Magento. To set up:

  1. Go to System > Cache Management > Disable.
  2. Next, you have to enable Logging settings. To do that, go to System > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > and head over to Log Settings. Now choose the Enabled option, and the logging setting will get enabled, allowing you to do Magento custom development.
  3. Magento development services provide us with SEO services. To enable the SEO setting again, go to System > Configuration and head over to Web and Search Engine Optimization. Now check the Yes option for Use Web Server Rewrites.
  4. Next action is to configure the reindex management. Navigate to  System > Index Management and choose Reindex all.
  5. To enable Developer Mode, go to .htaccess and add the following line of code at the end: SetEnv MAGE_IS_DEVELOPER_MODE “true.”
  6. Within <IfModule mod_php5.c> tag add  php_value display_errors On  in .htaccess
  7. Locate /errors/local.xml.sample and rename it to /errors/local.xml.

Never Edit Core Files

Some Common mistakes in Magento development that developers make are that they edit the core files while doing custom Magento development. The first rule of Magento development practice is never to alter those core files of the Magento platform. If you want to achieve any functionality, you can use any Magento extensions.

The only solution that Magento ecommerce development provides is to edit the “Shipping.php” file located at “app/code/core/Mage/Shipping/Model/Shipping.php.” You have two options: you can alter the same file here, or you can make a new file of the same name, and then, after editing, you can copy and paste it in the following path.

This trick works if you want to do any Magento custom development without altering the core files. So next time you upgrade your Magento platform, those files will get overwritten because Magento always looks for files in a local directory that is (app code local) before looking for a file in the core directory.

Turn on Template Path Hints

If e-commerce website development with Magento is new to you, then you surely can realize some hassle while understanding the logic behind the file structure and block structure of a Magento layout when you try to customize the storefront. Magento development services provide you with the solution so that you can enjoy developing with Magento. Magento has the best feature that helps you by displaying hints showing where the different files of your layout are. So, using this feature, it would be easy for you to locate them and edit them.

But to access this feature, you have to enable it so that Magento ecommerce development will get easier for you. Follow these steps.

  1. To access it, you have to log in to your administration panel.
  2. Now, the next step is to navigate to System > Configuration.
  3. Now find “Current Configuration Scope” from the left navigation column at the top.
  4. Select “Main Website” from the drop-down menu.
  5. Now go to Developer > Advanced in the left navigation column.
  6. Here you can see Template Path Hints under  “Debug”; just select Yes.
  7. Hit the Save Config button.

After you have done the above configurations on your Magento system, you will see some red boxes on your storefront. These red boxes are the underlying structure of the pages regarding templates and blocks.

PS: Only use this trick when you are in a development environment. Otherwise, your storefront would look hideous with big red blocks everywhere.

Best GUI for Magento Development

Ecommerce web design with Magento can be more lovely if you use JetBrains PhpStorm. It is a PHP editor that ‘understands’ your code and its structure. Thus, it provides full support for all PHP language features for modern and legacy projects. The other features of PhpStorm are:

  • PHP 5.5 support
  • Improved PHP syntax coloring
  • Vagrant, SSH console & remote tools
  • Support for Magento frameworks
  • Debugging and testing improvements

Best Magento Plugins for Magento Developers

If Magento programmers want to choose the best Magento development practices to make Magento e-commerce development easy and more catchy, then you can use Magicento, a PHPStorm plugin for Magento developers. Some of the features are:

  • Go to and autocomplete for factories
  • Go to for template paths
  • XML files
  • Class names
  • Documentation for XML nodes
  • Inside Magento environment evaluation of PHP code
  • And much more to come!

Best Magento Development Environment

Magento e-commerce developers love to use XAMPP for a Magento Development Environment. XAMPP is a free and easy-to-install Apache server. It contains MySQL, PHP, MariaDB, and Perl. XAMPP is an open-source package that is very easy to install and use. You can download it from the official site so you can start Magento custom development.

Remember!! XAMPP setup is necessary to be installed on your system before you start working on e-commerce website development with Magento.

Conclusion:

A successful Magento project depends on more than just technical expertise; it requires following best practices that improve maintainability, performance, and user experience. With the right tools and development methods in place, businesses can make the most of what Magento has to offer. Get in touch with Arpatech to create customized Magento solutions designed to support growth and long-term success. Let’s work together to build a website that truly supports your business.