Making Products Show Up on the Home Page of a New Magento Install

Problem: In a new install of magento you can create products but they don’t show on the home page.

Context: New magento install

Solution:

To make things show up on your home page, you have to go to CMS->Pages and find,  “Home Page” and click to edit. Then add

{{block type=”catalog/product_list” category_id=”XX” template=”catalog/product/list.phtml”}}

where XX is the category ID you want shown on the front page. You can get the category ID in Catalog->Manage Category then click the category you want on the left. The ID will be shown next to the name.

Also go to Catalog->Manage Products->YourProduct->Inventory and make sure you set your product to be in stock. Also that the quantity is not 0.

If you can’t set that. Go to System->Configuration->Catalog:Inventory->Product Stock Options and set “Manage Stock” to No.