Magento Files and Folder Structure

Hello Devs,

I’m Amit, a Magento Developer building cool e-commerce websites for RetailOn.

Magento is one of the widely used e-commerce platform based on Zend framework. Today I would like to explain few important Magento files and folders. Please have patience and let me know if you have any queries. I would love to help you out.

Once you will install Magento on your server you will see the following files/folders. app Directory
This is one of the most important directory of Magento.It contains different application development related files, module configuration files, design and theme related files and different localization files. app directory contains following folders and files.

• code
• design
• etc
• locale
• Mage.php

code Directory
Most of the time developers have to play around this code directory only. It contains three different directories.

• core
• community
• local

app/code/core: It contains Magento core folders. Only Core Magento Developers, who have written Magento are allowed to make modification in this folder. If your are planning to upgrade your your Magento version in future, never modify this folder.

app/code/community: It contains extensions installed from Magento Connect.

app/code/local:  It contains modules developed by developers locally. It is highly recommended to make your modification in this folder only(If you are not developing an extension).

app/design:  It contains all the designing files/folders . It contains following three sub folders.
  frontend : It contains all the design files related to fronend of Magento.
adminhtml: It contains all the design files related to back-end of Magento.
  install: It contains all the design Files related to Magento Installer.

app/etc: This directory contains all the configuration files related to the website (xml files).

app/locale: This directory contains localization specific csv files.