Magento Interview Question - Answers

1. What is Magento?

Ans. Magento is a rich-featured eCommerce platform built on open-source technology that provides online merchants with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their eCommerce store. Magentos intuitive administration interface features powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools to give merchants the power to create sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Designed to be completely scalable and backed by Variens support network, Magento offers companies the ultimate eCommerce solution.

2. What architecture is used by Magento?

Ans. MVC which means Model-View-Controller.

3. How much Magento product Types?

Ans.
- Simple products
A Magento simple product is the most used product type for Magento webshops. This is because it's the most general product type of them all. A Magento simple product should be used for a single item without any specific selectable variations. Think about a coffee cup, a chandelier, a table or whatever.

- Grouped products
A Magento grouped product should be used for a combination of Magento simple products. Think about a coffee cup that is sold together with a saucer, a silver spoon, a breakfast plate or whatever. You can't define a specific price for a Magento grouped product but you can define a discount amount.

- Configurable products
A Magento configurable product should be used for a single item with specific selectable variations. Think about a coffee cup obtainable in different colours and sizes, a woman's bag obtainable in different materials, a light boll obtainable in different watts or whatever. Each selectable variation can have its own additional costs.

- Virtual products
A Magento virtual product should be used for a virtual (not touchable) item. Think about an insurance, a reservation, an extra product guarantee or whatever. A virtual product does not allow selecting a shipping method at checkout simply because there's nothing to ship.

- Bundle products
A Magento bundle product should be used for a bundle of simple (or virtual) products which are not to be sold separately. Think about a laptop where the customer can choose various items such as hard disk, processor, internal memory or whatever. Each of these items are simple (or virtual) products but can only be sold within the bundle product.

- Downloadable products
A Magento downloadable product should be used for online software items. Think about an MP3 file, a PowerPoint presentation, a Magento extension or whatever. A downloadable product does not allow selecting a shipping method at checkout simply because there's nothing to ship.

4. What are the different features of Magento?

Ans.
- User Management
- Customer Management
- Product Management
- Order Management
- Payment Management
- Site Management
- Search engine optimization
- International Support

5. What is Magento module structure?

Ans.
- app/ 1) code 2) etc
- code => local => Namespache => modulename => Block
- controllers
- etc
- Helper
- Model
- sql

6. How we can enhance the Magento performance?

Ans.
- Disable the Magento log
- Disable any un-used modules (i.e, mage_poll)
- Magento Caching ( Enable Cache for good result)
- Enable Gzip compression
- USE Gzip Components
- Optimize your images
- Optimize your Server
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Put Stylesheets at Top (Add CSS Files in head tag)
- Put Scripts at the Bottom (Add Js files in footer)
- Avoid CSS Expressions

7. what is the difference between Mage::getModel() and Mage::getSingletone() in Magento?

Ans.
- Mage::getModel(): It always creates a new object
- Mage::getSingleton(): It always look for an existing object and if not then creates a new object

8. What technology used by Magento?

Ans.
Magento uses PHP as a web server scripting language and the MySQL Database. The data model is based on the Entity-attribute-value model that stores data objects in tree structures, thus allowing a change to a data structure without changing the database definition.

9. How to create magento custom module?

Ans.
Steps to create custom magento module:
Namespace : Uts
Module Name : Utsmodule
- Create directory Utsmodule in app/code/local/Uts
- Create Block, controllers, etc, Utsmodule directories.( Create controller, block and module file as required.)
- Create module configuration file (app/code/local/Uts/Utsmodule/etc/config.xml).
- Create xml file (app/etc/modules/Uts_Utsmodule.xml)to enable/disable module and tell magento system from which code pool that module will be taken.

10. How to include CMS block in template file(.phtml)?

Ans.
Access block's content from .phtml template file by :
echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('static_block_id')->toHTML();