Uploading Template Sample Data To Your Database

Another Magento question I get asked often is how to install sample data so that a users site looks like the example website that they purchased their template from.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps necessary to make your site look exactly like the sample template.

Upload The Template Media Folder

To do this, you need to first upload the media folder that came with your template to your Mageto root folder. The Magento root folder is the folder that also holds the skin, app, and lib folders.

Insert The Sample Data

Now, we need to replace your current database files with those located in the .sql file (this is the sample data) that came with your Magento template. To do this you need to open your database editor of choice, for most of us that is phpMyAdmin.

Find the database that holds all of the tables for this Magento installation and delete every table. You will not be able to delete (or drop) all of the tables at once because of the relationships between the tables. You may have to delete each folder one-by-one.

Once you have deleted all of the tables goto import then click choose and find the .sql file that came with the template. Save this and you now have inserted all of the sample data.

Delete The local.xml File

Go back to your FTP and locate the app/etc directory. Delete the local.xml file found there.

Reconfigure Magento

Go back to your browser and visit your URL. You will now reinstall Magento with the new sample data you have inserted. Once that is complete you will see your new Magento site that should look exactly like the template you originally purchased.

How to Enable SEO URL’s in Magento

I often get asked questions related to errors when trying to enable Magento’s search engine friendly URL’s. This will teach you how to both enable the feature in Magento and troubleshoot the most common error that occurs in Magento installs.

Enable SEO Friendly URL’s

Login to your Magento administrator back-end

Navigate to System->Configuration->Web->Search Engine Optimization

Switch to Yes and save.

Flush The Magento Cache

Goto System->Cache Management

Refresh the catalog rewrites

Goto All Cache and change drop down to Refresh.

Click save

On most server, this should take out the index.php in your URL’s.

If you are getting a 404 error, continue reading.

Fixing Mod_Rewrite Errors

I’m Getting A 404 Cannot Find Page Error!

The most common cause for this is that you have an incorrect .htaccess file in your ftp.

Goto the magentocommerce.com site and download the magento files again.

Extract the files, and ONLY upload the .htaccess file to your Magento root directory.

This should fix any problems related to enabling the use of web server rewrites in Magento.