10 Things about Admin Sidebar in Magento 2

The sidebar is designed for both desktop and mobile devices for the purpose of navigating and managing the store. In this paper, we will take a closer look at components of Admin Sidebar in Magento 2.

The Admin sidebar is located on the left of the page and known as the main menu of your store’s admin. This flyout menu helps you control and operate your store effectively on a daily basis.

1. Dashboard

When you sign in to the Admin, the first page you can see is the dashboard giving the overall view of sale and customer activity. The dashboard is the default first page for the admin but you can also alter the configuration to present another page when logging in.

dashboard-admin-sidebar

2. Sales

In Sales menu, there are selections as different steps in the cycle of an order consisting of orders, invoices, shipments, credit memos, billing agreements and transactions so that the admin can manage them at any time.

sales-admin-sidebar

3. Products

The Products menu supports admin in product creation, category and inventory management along with tools to control the content of catalog.

product-admin-sidebar

4. Customers

You can manage customer accounts and view who is currently online in your store with the Customers menu. Choosing All Customers if you want to have detail information about clients or selecting Now Online if you need to know customers who are online.  

customer-admin-sidebar

5. Marketing

The Marketing menu allows you to manage markerting tools including promotions, communications, SEO & search or user content.

marketing-admin-sidebar

6. Content

With the Content menu, you can manage the content elements and design of the store. It consists of creating pages, blocks and frontend apps or controlling your store display.

content-admin-sidebar

7. Reports

In the Reports menu, you will have insight into aspects of your stores comprising marketing, sales, customers, reviews and products. About marketing, you can view products in cart, search terms, abandoned carts or newsletter problem reports in detail. Moreover, orders, tax, invoice, shipping and more can be supervised in sales as well as order and new accounts report are listed in customers section so that you can manage them effectively. In terms of products, you can see reviews and other necessary information about products such as view or bestsellers.

reports-admin-sidebar

8. Stores

The Stores menu helps you manage the store hierarchy, configuration, sales and order settings, tax and currency, product attributes, product review ratings, and customer groups.

stores-admin-sidebar

9. System

The System menu supports you in importing and exporting data via data transfer, setting up extensions, managing system caches and indexes, permissions, backups, system notifications or custom variables.

system-admin-sidebar

10. Find Partners & Extensions

This Magento marketplace allows you to have knowledge of platinum partners of Magento or search other partners by visiting the Magento Partner Directory. You can also find solutions for your store with extensions and themes which are essential components of the Magento Ecosystem.

partners-extensions-admin-sidebar

We hope that you have collected helpful information by reading this article. If you have any question, please feel free to contact us.

An Overview of Product Workspace in Magento 2

Creating product(s) is the very primary step to build an online store. First of all, you need to determine which product type your new item belongs to. There are 6 types of products in Magento 2: Simple product, Configurable product, Grouped Product, Virtual Product, Bundle Product, and Downloadable Product. Each of those types has its own features that differentiate themselves from others. In this section, you will find information about how to create a product of each type in Product Workspace

The first part of studying how to create a new product for your online store is to learn about Product Workspace. Product Workspace is a section in which a set of basic information of a new product is performed. It is not exactly the same for all types of product, but configured by admin in the categories and attributes setup part.

Product Workspace
Product Workspace

It is crucial that every single product need to have a Name, a unique SKU for controlling activities and a unit price to sell. Other fields can be either optional or mandatory, it is up to attributes setting.

Enable Product: Indicates the online status of a product:

  • “Yes” : The product is currently online.
  • “No” : The product is currently offline.

Attribute Set: The attribute set of a new product will have effect on what kind of information you need to add to your product description. For example, if you choose Bottom for the Attribute Set, some kind of information like Color, Size, … might be required. But if you choose Gear the Category Gear field will show up.

Add Attribute: This button allows admin to add an attribute for a product. For example, you may want to add the Manufacturer Attribute to your new bag to provide more detailed information to customers in the homepage.

Save Menu: Magento 2 offer store owners three saving options after creating new products.

  • Save: Store up the current product, and continue working.
  • Save & New: Save and close the current product, then open a new product grid right right on click. This new product grid is base on the same product type and template. It is especially helpful when admin want to create a number of products in the same product type.
  • Save & Duplicate: Like the second option, its function is to save and close the current product. However, this selection will open a new duplicate copy.
  • Save & Close: Save the current product and come back to the Inventory workspace.

    Save Menu Product Workspace
    Save Menu

That is a brief information about how to create a new product and what the Product Workspace is. Follow our later blogs to get more information.

How to Manage Dynamic Media URLs in Magento 2?

4A Dynamic Media URLs is an address that direct user to an image or a media file. As a normal dynamic URL, a dynamic media URL may include a query string and is not very much friendly with SEO. If it is set as “enable” by admin, dynamic URL can bring the users directly to your data processor. It also can link them to files that are stored on a content delivery network. Dynamic Media URL in products and categories can help to improve catalog performance, resulting in a positive experience for your customers when they are shopping online.

Like other markup tags, a dynamic media URL code is covered in double curly braces. Here is a typical format of a dynamic media URL: {{media url=”path/to/image.jpg”}}

Configure Dynamic Media URLs

As mentioned, dynamic media URLs can be configured to be either “enable” or “disable” by an admin of the online store. Below are steps should be taken:

  1. Sign in with an admin account.
  2. Click Stores on the left panel, then choose Configuration under Settings.
  3. Expand Catalog and tap the Catalog element bellow it.
  4. Click the drop-down arrow on the right side of Storefront.

    Media URLs Storefront
    Media URLs Storefront
  5. Now set the Allow Dynamic Media URL in Products and Categories choice as your preference.Configure-Dynamic-media-URL
  1. Press Save Configuration to confirm your setting.

Configure Static Media URLs

Admin can also use static media URLs for catalog product and category descriptions.

  1. In the backend status, tap Stores.
  2. Choose Configuration under Settings.
  3. Expand General factor, then select Content Management. Here you will see WYSIWYG Options.
  4. Set Use Static URL for Media Content in WYSIWYG for Catalog to “Yes” if you want to use static URLs by default for media files and “No” otherwise.
  5. Click Save Configuration to save changes.

    Static Media URLs
    Static Media URLs

In short, with only a little effort, you can easily configure dynamic media URLs for your online store. It not only helps to better control catalog products and categories but also bring your customers finer shopping time.