Magnik Walk-through

Magnik user Scotch Macaskill, who by his own admission is not a "techie", has successfully istalled the script and set up a number of Amazon stores - see his first efforts here:

• Wildlife Cameras
• Wildlife Toys - Webkinz Plush Animals
• Hiking & Camping Store.

Here's what he has to say about Magnik, together with the steps he took to install the script, create a MySQL database and select products for the store:

What I particularly like about the stores created with Magnik is the simple, uncluttered navigation, the automatic breadcrumb trail, and features like customer reviews, best prices, and related accessories that visitors can check for each product.

It's not my intention to review Magnik in detail, but rather to set out the steps I took to build a fully functional store which I hope will assist others in using Magnik. I'm not a techie and I apologise if I've left out anything crucial or if what I'm saying is obvious to those of you who are adept at installing php scripts and databases.

It's assumed you understand that a MySQL database is necessary - probably obvious to a programmer but not so obvious to a non-techie. So there are no instructions on how to do this.

For this example, I am using Bluehost as my hosting provider, although I have set up my Hiking & Camping store on Hostgator with no problems.

Before you start using the datafeed, you'll need an Amazon Associate ID, which you get when you sign up for Amazon's Associate Program.

You'll also need an Access Key ID from Amazon, which you can get by signing up for AWS (Amazon Web Services) at http://aws.amazon.com. Once signed up, you should receive an email with details of how to get your Access Key ID.

Okay, here are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded Magnik to a folder on my hard-drive and unzipped the file. This creates a folder called "magnik" within which are two sub-folders, called "app" and "cake", and three files, ".htacess". "index.php", and "settings.php", plus a text file called "install.txt" which provides basic install instructions.

2. Using FileZilla as my FTP program, I created a new directory called "cameras" within the public_html directory on the server. I uploaded the two folders "app" and "cake", plus the three files - ".htaccess", "index.php" and "settings.php" to the "camera" directory - see screenshot:

3. In cPanel of Bluehost I then created a MySQL database using the MySQL wizard. It's important here to make a note of:
a) the database name you select
b) the username you select
c) the password you select

If your host's cPanel doesn't offer a wizard for creating a database, it's still fairly straightfoward with three basic steps: create a new database and give it a name, create a new user with a password and then link the DB you've created to the user. Again, make a note of the information as above.

In most cases your database name and username will have the username provided by your host in front of it. So if your hosting username is "jonadam", and you named your database "amazon" and chose "myshop" as a username, then the full database name will be "jonadam_amazon", while the username for the database will be "jonadam_myshop".

Below are screenshots showing the sequence of creating the DB using Bluehost's MySQL wizard:

i) Here I give the New Database the name "photo"

ii) Next step is to provide a username - "andrew" and a password. Notice at the top of the screen it says "added the database ajmacask_photo". So my hosting username, "ajmacask", has already been appended to the DB name, "photo".

iii) In this step the user and DB are joined - ie user "ajmacask_andrew" is added to the database "ajmacask_photo". You can also select what priveleges the user is allowed. I leave as is, with All Priveleges checked.

iv) The final step confirms the user has been added and completes the DB creation.

4. Now that the magnik script has been uploaded and the database created, it's time to edit the "settings.php" file to include some vital information.

What I did was to rename my "settings.php" file to "settings_original.php" on my hard-drive so as not to lose the original. I then opened it in a text editor (Notepad), made the changes and saved it back to its given name, "settings.php" (Note: when "saving as", select "all files" for file type, otherwise Notepad will save the file as a .txt file). Now it's easy to upload the revised version to my server. See screenshot below:

5. The settings to be edited are shown in the screenshot below, with an explanation for each one.

1. 'awsaki' - replace this with your Amazon Access Key ID
2. 'amazon ID' - replace with your Amazon Associates ID
3. 'login' - replace with you database username - in my case 'ajmacask_andrew'
4. 'password' - replace with your database password, exactly, ie nothing in front of it.
5. 'db_name' - replace with your db name, in my case 'ajmacask_photo'
6. 'localhost' - for most hosting accounts, this is correct and does not have to be edited.
7. 'admin' - this is the username for logging into Magnik admin section - leave as is or change to whatever you want
8. 'pass' - this is the password for logging into Magnik admin section - you should insert a new password here

Once you've made the changes, save the file as "settings.php" as outlined above and upload to the server to replace the existing settings.php file.

6. You now need to set permissions to 777 for the folder "tmp" and all its subfolders. "tmp" can be found within the "app" folder. See screenshot below where permissions have been changed to 777 for the "tmp" folder. I then did the same for sub-folders within "tmp", viz "cache", "logs", "sessions" and "tests".

7. At this stage you're ready to access the Magnik admin area for your site and start adding Amazon categories and products. In your browser, type in the URL for your store, eg: www.mysite/admin if you added Magnik to the public_html directory, or www.mysite/directoryname/admin if you created a separate directory for Magnik. In my case it would be www.mysite/cameras/admin

8. This should now open the Magnik admin area, which looks similar to the Magnik website - see below (note in this screenshot I've taken the first step of adding "hiking & camping" products to my hiking store):

9. From here you will need to work closely with Amazon's site as you manage your categories and decide what products to add to your store. You should, if possible, try to get familiar with Amazon's categories and where to find products. I sometimes found it a problem locating the correct "Node ID" for products I wanted to include.

For the Hiking store, I went into Amazon.com and selected the Camping & Hiking category from Sports & Outdoors. I then copied the URL (it's very long) from my browser into Notepad and found node=3400371 within the URL. I entered that number, 3400371, as the Node ID, gave it my own title, "Hiking & Camping Gear" and saved changes.

I then clicked on the "View Subs" link and clicked "Regenerate this level" which brought up all the sub-categories with their IDs and default titles already inserted. (See below). Note: You can click on "Regenerate, including all subcategories", which will do just that - create a hierarchy of all categories and sub-categories for Hiking & Camping. If you don't want to include them all, you can go through each level and delete those levels or products you don't want. I opted for the slower route, regenerating level by level, simply because I wanted to see each time what sub-categories would be created.

10. Taking the slower, level-by-level route, for each sub-category you can again click on "View Subs", then click on "Regenerate this level" to see what's listed in that sub-category.

In the screenshot below, I've selected Hiking Apparel and regenerated this level to show the sub-categories for Hiking Apparel. Notice how the right navigation column now bolds "Hiking Apparel" (my underlining in red) and adds links to the sub-categories. That's the nav bar that appears on your site - it's clean, tightly themed, and easy to navigate.

In the next screenshot, I've gone a level deeper, selecting "Men's Hiking Apparel" and regenerated this level.

Here's a final screenshot of the actual Hiking Basics store, showing "Men's Hiking Apparel". Notice the breadcrumb trail below the search box that's automatically created. It shows visitors where they are and has links back to the categories they've come from.

For this store I've made minimal changes to the look as the colors were close enough to those in the header and the rest of the site. With two other stores I've created, I made more significant changes to get them to more closely match the look of the "mother" site. See:
Wildlife Cameras
Wildlife Toys - Webkinz Plush Animals

Each of my stores has slightly different top navigation, depending on what products I'm promoting and how the store fits in with the website as a whole. Note that none of the stores is a "stand-alone" Amazon store, but is part of a larger website with original content to avoid being penalized by Google as a "thin affiliate". As a result, I've selected only those categories and products that fit the theme of the sites.

I'm not going to go into detail of how to change the look of the site. I can code basic HTML and CSS but my knowledge of php is minimal. For anyone skilled in php and CSS, it'll be a breeze customising your site.

The pages that will need customising to give the site your own look and feel can be found in the "views" folder, which is in the "app" folder. Pages I customised were "default.ctp" (app/views/layouts/), "details.ctp" and "display.ctp" (app/views/products/), plus the "site.css" file (app/webroot/CSS/).

Final Verdict: I can definitely recommend Magnik and believe that it provides an excellent way of setting up a fully-functional store using Amazon's datafeeds. Your visitors will enjoy the user-friendly navigation, big, clear pictures, the price comparisons and user reviews. The silo-type navigation in the side menu, where links are tightly themed, should also find favor with the search engines.