How to create Configurable Products in Magento

Magento offers two options to create configurable products (products with options such as Size or Color):

Simple products with custom options (Recommended if you don’t plan to track inventory.)
Configurable products and associate simple products to it. (Recommended if you plan to track inventory.)

To create simple products log in your admin control panel select Catalogue => Manage Products => Create new product.
1. Simple products with custom options:
a) Create Simple Product

b) Fill out all required fields such as: General, Price, Meta Information, Description, Inventory, Websites and Categories.

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c) Create Custom Option

d) Add a new option and add your own custom option. Our example is for Size.

e) Save the product and that is all. Your product must show your custom option on the front end.

2) Create a configurable product and associate simple products to it.
a) First you must create the attributes (make sure it can be used for configurable product)
To create an attribute log in your admin control panel select Catalogue => Manage Attributes => Create new attribute.

b) Our attribute code in this example is for Jacket Color.

c) Add label options and save the attribute.

d) Manage attribute set to default
To manage the attribute set log in your admin control panel select Catalogue => Manage Attributes => Manage Attribute Set.

e) Move the attribute created (in our case jacket color) to default attributes. You can easily move it, just drag and drop it, exactly where you want to display it.

f) Moved under default fields and save the attribute set.

g) Create the simple products and fill in the attribute. It is not required to add images, description. Set visibility to nowhere & save the product.
To create simple products log in your admin control panel select Catalogue => Manage Products => Create new product.

In our case we have our Jacket Color attribute in 4 colors: Red, Green, White, and Blue. We now have to create a simple product for each color. In total there will be 4 simple products. We can duplicate the products to make the process faster. (Just use a different Product name, Sku & Jacket Color.)
h) Once all simple products are done, we can create 1 configurable product for it.

i) In this example Configurable Product uses Jacket Color and therefore the box (for Jacket Color) is checked.

j) Create the configurable product and fill in all the dates required such as general, description, images, websites, and categories.

k) Under associated products category, the simple products created must be associated with the 4 simple products in our case & save the configurable product.