How To Install Magento Extensions – Magento Extension Installation Guide

How To Install Magento Extensions

Magento Extensions are simply great way of adding new features and functionality to your Magento powered stores. Magento is powerful E-commerce software to build highly scalable online store. Magento software is built on Zend PHP framework which provides great flexibility and reliability to Magento powered stores. No doubt, there are more than 1700+ extensions built for Magento stores, the number of extensions are increasing day by day.

How To Install Magento Community or Commercial Extensions?

There are various cool Magento extensions Live in Magento Connect repository. Magento Extensions are classified into two main categories:

1. Magento Core (Extension Created by Magentocommerce team)
2. Community Extensions (Free Magento Extensions Built by the Magento Community)
3. Commercial Extensions (Paid Magento Extensions)

Depending upon your need, required support you can choose any Magento extension to install. Once you have made up your mind of which extension to install, just follow the steps given below where i am presenting step by step instructions for installing Magento extensions.

Installing Magento Commercial Extensions

Commercial Magento Extensions are not sold via Magento Connect. You can browse those extensions from Commercial Magento Extensions but in order to install any of the commercial extension you need to go to the merchant site and buy the extension. After your successful purchase they will send you the zip file containing installation instruction and source code. All these commercial extensions are written by different companies so their style of installation might differ from each other. Just, focus on the installation instruction and you will know what to do. Don’t forget to go to admin area > System > Cache Management, “Refresh” option in the “All cache” dropdown and click “Save cache settings” button. You can always ask for support if you find the extension installation too difficult for you. Most of these extension merchants provide either Free or Paid support.

Install Magento Extensions via Magento Connect Manager (Community Extensions)

If you are about to install a Free Magento community extension from Magento Connect then follow the steps given below (Advance users may skip few steps):

1. Select the community extension by browsing huge Magento extension archive. OR, If you know the direct URL of your favourite extension just open its Magento connect URL
2. Now, you will see a button right under the theme image called “Get Extension Key”. You need to click “Get Extension Key” and agree to extension license agreement.

3. After you select agree checkbox and click “Get Extension Key” you will see the Magento extension key right there itself (displayed in the box). You need to paste this extension key in your store’s Magento connect tab. Keep it safe.
4. Copy this Magento extension key. E.g. It will look like “magento-community/Magik_Autocomplete”
5. In order to install this Magento community extension into your Magento store you need to login to your store admin panel and go to System->Magento Connect->Magento Connect Manager. Magento connect manager will ask you to login again. You need to use your store admin login credentials to get past the login screen. You need to paste the theme “extension key” copied from the Magentocommerce.com’s Magento connect here.

6. Installation process will begin and after successful install it will show a message. You can optionally click on “Refresh” button to see whether the extension is installed or not.
7. If the extension requires any post installation configuration then you should read & follow the documentation provided with the extension.
8. Your Magento extension is installed and Ready.

How To Install Magento Extensions From shell, using command line PEAR instructions

Suppose you own a Magento powered store which is Live with high traffic. Such high traffic store will surely face lots of hacking attacks. Leaving your folders and files writeable (chmod 777) will certainly leaves a big hole in your store’s security. In this case you might not want to download Magento extensions via Magento connect manager (which requires write permission on several folders). In this case you might want to install Magento extension using SSH Terminal.

1. Copy the Magento extension key as mentioned above
2. Log into your Magento SSH Terminal (Magento install directory)

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# set preferred stability for installed/upgraded packages (alpha,beta,stable): ./pear config-set preferred_state beta   # initial installation from downloader package: ./pear mage-setup . ./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest   # install extension: (paste the extension key in front of ./pear install "Magento extension key" ./pear install magento-community/Your_Extension_Key   # list available upgrades ./pear list-upgrades   # upgrade a package ./pear upgrade magento-core/Mage_Package   # uninstall a package ./pear uninstall magento-community/Unwanted_Package

Note: Your PEAR package might be installed in “magento/downloader/pearlib”

This will successfully install a new Magento Extension using SSH Terminal. Few Magento extensions would require you to place specific directories to specific place. Read the manual and copy required files to those specific directories.