Magento Ecommerce is a powerful, flexible open-source ecommerce solution. It runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP platform. From one installation, you can control multiple storefronts, all sharing customer and product information. Magento’s templates and themes enable you to customize the look and feel of your store, even optimizing it for mobile phones. Magento Extensions enable you to connect Magento to a large number of payment gateways and shipping services. Modular code enables you to upgrade your Magento installation while retaining your customizations.


Developing and implementing magento project requires understanding its directory structure. Here is a brief overview of Magento folder structure.

/ app – is where the application resides

/ app / etc – is global configuration den

/ app / code – is where modules installed their models and controllers

/ app / code / core – are core team developed or certified modules

/ app / code / community – are community contributed modules

/ app / code / local – are local customizations

/ app / code / core / Mage – magento default namespace

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} – module root

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / etc – module configuration

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / controllers – controllers provided by module

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / Block – Block logic classes

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / Model – Object Models provided by module

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / Model / Mysql4 – Resource Models provided by module

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / sql – sql installation and upgrade files between module versions

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / sql / {resource} / – resource model specific upgrades

/ app / code / core / Mage / {Module} / sql / {resource} / {type}-{action}-{versions}.(sql|php) – resource update files. example: mysql4-upgrade-0.6.23-0.6.25.sql

/ app / design – is location of design packages (layouts, templates, translations)

/ app / design / frontend – frontend design

/ app / design / adminhtml – HTML admin panel design

/ app / design / {area} / {package} / {theme} – theme customizations

/ app / design / {area} / {package} / {theme} / layout – .xml files that define block structure for different cases in website flow

/ app / design / {area} / {package} / {theme} / template – .phtml (html with php tags) templates

/ app / design / {area} / {package} / {theme} / locale – Zend_Translate compatible translation files for package/theme

/ app / locale – locale files

/ app / locale / {locale (en_US)} – Zend_Translate compatible translation files for modules

/ skin / {area} / {package} / {theme} / – is where design package css and images are

/ lib – are libraries such as Zend and Varien

/ js – are javascripts smile

/ media – uploaded files (product images, pdf documents, etc)

/ tests – Unit tests (not done yet)

/ var – temporary files