How to make your own eCommerce site on the cheap-Part 2

This is a continuation of this article > "How to make your own eCommerce site on the cheap-Part 1". At this point, you should have a server and a domain name set up. Now, we are going to take it from a blank landing page to a real store! At this point, you can lean on the Magento dev docs, and a few other resources to get everything you need.

Next, you are going to actually download the software from Magento.

1. Go to this link:https://magento.com/tech-resources/download
2. Click download on the latest stable version of Magento 2 with NO sample data as a zip file. The sample data build tends to break more than the build with no data. And, you probably want to put your products on the site anyways without deleting a bunch of made up products.
3. You will be asked to make an account, complete the account creation process.

Now that it is downloaded you will log into your server and upload the zipped file to the root of your file system. If you unzip the file before you try to upload it, it will take a long time. There are a few different ways to do this, but since you are using Plesk it is very easy.

1. Log into your server
2. Click Files in the left navigation
3. Click upload and upload the zipped file
4. Move it to your document root, which is httpdocs
5. Unzip the file. This may take some time

Once it is unzipped, you can follow the Magento install instructions which I will just link because they are pretty good. These are the instructions you want to follow: https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/install-gde/prereq/zip_install.html. If you run into any issues during your process, there is a very good chance someone else has ran into the issue and you can just google the error message and get good results and help. The dev docs (which is what the link with the instructions is a part of) is a great place to start but you also have Magento’s StackExchange. This is a great place to ask questions and find answers, but be sure to follow community guidelines. Additionally, because Magento is opensource you can find out a lot on their GitHub: https://github.com/magento/magento2 .

After installation, you want to log on to the back end through the admin link you created during installation. Let’s walk through some steps you will need to do to get your store running. When you first log into your backend you will probably get an error about “index not valid” or “cron job not running”. This just means you don’t have your backend jobs running properly, so you will go index management from the side menu:

Then select all indexes and update to schedule, so that it looks like this:

This can also be done through the CLI, which is the faster more recommended method. This is the command if you want to do it that way:

php bin/magento indexer:reindex

After updating your index, your error message will change to “your cache is out of date” or a similar error. From system tools go to cache management and select all and refresh. These should all also be enabled, so if any are disabled, enable them. You may also need to Flush the cache. This step can also be done with the CLI and the command is:

php bin/magento cache:flush

After this, your site will be operational and now you can do fun stuff like adding plugins, products, and themes. Once you get your site fully customized and have set up all of your payment handling solutions, you are good to go!

Here are some recommendations to get your site perfect (not sponsored):

• Plugins:
• Payment processing: Stripe
• Tax handling: Taxjar
• Themes
• https://marketplace.magento.com/

It is also recommended that you set up remote backups on your server before you do too much so that you can always restore your site.

Products can also be uploaded via CSV, and there are many paid services that will help you switch your products from a different system to Magento 2 if you already have a lot of products on another system.

It is also recommended to set up your site on Cloudflare, which helps prevent DDOS, and can make your site a lot faster.

Remember, the Magento community is open source so ask lots of questions! Good luck!