Author Archives: Harshal Shah

About Harshal Shah

Harshal Shah is CEO & Founder of Xhtmljunkies, Located in Gujarat, India, XHTML Junkies is one of the best companies that offer unique eCommerce solutions by the virtue of its dedicated professionals. Our professionals are extremely proficient in offering development services pertaining to eCommerce. You can find Harshal on and Twitter.

One step Checkout- The Simplest Process of Magento Store

Checking out is one of the complicated part while placing an order online. One step checkout magento extension combines all the six steps into a single step which often reduces the check out process removing unnecessary stuff. Giving a better consumer experience, one can easily fill out the information without waiting for the tabs to load and easiest way to implement. It ensures the checking process is more faster and simple to improve the user experience and also sales which keeps customers returning as visitors.

Also it saves the massive time and creates a fast and convenient environment to shop online providing all the required information together in one page. It has become the primary preference of various E-commerce solutions available thus enabling the priority of Magento services. It is probably the single most significant way to have the technical change which gives the immediate results.The following are the key features of the one step checkout.

Features:

  • Default shipping and payment methods

  • Customers can comment before placing an order

  • One can register in the checkout page itself

  • Supports multi-language

  • Auto updates

  • Avoids confusion among customers with registration

  • Disables unneccesary fields

  • Provides multiple options for registration

Have You Tried FishPig’s WordPress Integration?

FishPig’s WordPress Integration is an addition for Magento ecommerce that integrates your WordPress blog with your Magento store. The extension is well-suited with Magento Enterprise, Magento Professional and Magento Community Edition.

Some of the best features of FishPig’s WordPress Integration are:

  • It is 100% free to use and easy to install through Magento Connect
  • Doesn’t require any alteration in core Magento or a WordPress file
  • It installs WordPress in the same database as Magento or different
  • Well integrates with an existing WordPress blog and carry on the same URL’s
  • You can use your Magento theme for your WordPress blog
  • Need one click login to your WordPress Admin from your Magento Admin
  • Provides support for WordPress short codes and fresh custom short codes
  • Relates WordPress posts with Magento products
  • WordPress Multisite assimilation
  • Automatically generates blog RSS feeds and Google XML sitemaps
  • Provides recaptcha support for blog comments
  • Add custom META and page title information using All in One SEO
  • Integrates different plugins such as Share This, WP No-Category Base, Syntax Highlighter and more
  • Allow WordPress blog search
  • Provide WordPress Page support
  • Organize the blog sidebar by means of the WordPress Admin widgets section
  • Allow NextGEN Gallery Integration

 

What is WordPress Customer Synchronization?

If you are fed up of forcing your users to have two logs for your store Magento and WordPress, than this new “FishPig’s WordPress Customer Synchronization” extension is for you. This great extension allows you an uncomplicated and automatic synchronization of your Magento customer and WordPress users. Now, every user will only need one login for both the sites which will definitely aid towards creating a better shopping experience on your website.

AppStore Links a Great Tool to Update Data Directly from Apple Server

App StoreAn AppStore Plugin is a WordPress plugin that put together the iOS and Mac App Store (TradeDoubler) links in an enormously attractive manner. These link seems very pleasant and using this WordPress plugin lets you to put in iPhone app links (affiliate ones) to your website quickly. You require a TradeDoubler-ID to acquire the most out of this plugin as TradeDoubler is one of the major advertising platforms and it’s good to have an easier incorporation between iOS/Mac App Store, Mac OS X Screen casts and TradeDoubler.

You can make use of this plugin if you are exhausted of altering URLs and prices on each Link to the AppStore on your page. This plugin automatically updates all the data directly from Apple Server. TradeDoubler-ID helps you in automatic creation of Affiliate Links to the AppStore. You are also able to set up caching-times for images and the content.

You can simply add Links to the Apple AppStore by using [app ##idnumber##] in your posts, pages or comments. The ID number is the number from the official AppStore URL. Some of the examples are:

[appimg ##idnumber##] provide screenshots

[appext ##idnumber##] provide info, screenshots and a nice border.

The installation of this plugin is very simple. You just have to Upload the AppStore Folder and its contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory and then simply activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. After activating the plugin you will be able to set up the plugin through the plugin-settings-page. This plugin is pretty easy to install and use.

Another most important advantage of this plugin is that all the links appear steady and allows you to draw certain information from the various stores such as version number, name, rating, etc. Even though AppStore Links working is triggered and incorporated somewhat easily, getting TradeDoubler set isn’t as easy, but the step-by-step setup guide is really a great contribution.

How WordPress Shortcodes Are Important?

WordPress Shortcodes are an incredible set of attractive and functional elements to your site that were introduced in version 2.5. WordPress Shortcodes are considered one of the most

WordPress Shortcodes

useful features that are absolutely free WordPress Plug-in and comes bundled with the full set of elements. The regular user performing as editor has the capability to distribute lively content by means of macros that is in square brackets ([]), excluding requirement for programming skills.

The different kinds of elements of WordPress Shortcodes that can full fill all your requirements are Layout management, functionality for User Interface creation, Message boxes, Lists, Buttons, smart links, etc. All these help you to easily link contents on your site in the form of IDs or names without using the full URLs.

You just need to make use of spontaneous Shortcode editor to produce a message box, error box or warning message on your site. You can also create multi-column layouts, a fancy button, a highly stylized link card, a list of items with various icons, or combine multiple nested Shortcodes to create for example: A list of links or a list of buttons and a lot more.

Some of the best Features of WordPress Shortcodes are:

1. Provides more than 20 Shortcodes and various elements

2. It is very fast and easy to use

3. Allows easy content organization

4. Helps create tabs, sections, layout, lists, links, buttons and more.

5. Simple to pull the appearance with incorporated custom CSS field

6. SEO Friendly tabs available that works perfectly without any JavaScript.

7. Make use of latest standard that are fully WordPress acquiescent

8. It allows you for an effortless placing in posts

9. Provides a reliable importing and exporting of contents across sites

10. Allows different parameters for vital customizations

11. Every parameter is recognized in detail in the Shortcode editor

12. Provides various useful integrated lightweight icons

13. Voluntary slick and professional skin obtainable

WordPress Shortcodes were commenced in WordPress 2.5 to facilitate you in generating macro codes to apply inside your content. WordPress Shortcode is much easy to understand, and it helps you produce a dynamic content for your web site, you could make everything you want with it, WordPress Shortcodes are superior method to build incredible buttons in your posts.

Are You Using Custom Option Swatch Extension?

Custom Option Swatch Extension is an addition for Magento that allows the usage of Swatch thumbnail images as an alternative of the standard version of custom options in the form of a checkbox, drop down box and multi select box. This addition to Magento can work with every version on Magento and has made your online shop look more attractive and user-friendly.

Some of the best features of Custom Option Swatch are:

1.    It is very much easy to install
2.    Provide easy integration
3.    Widens Magentos default Custom Options
4.    Supports almost all the Magento’s Product Types
5.    Maintains custom ordering of options on a product
6.    Provide price modification
7.    Can be publicized in shop cart
8.    Provide boundless number of options
9.    Works well with Color Swatch extension
10.    Can be place to “is required” selection

There are many more features of Custom Option Swatch which makes this extension more user-friendly that will not only make things easier for you, but also make your work faster and hassle free.

The best thing of this extension is that it can work well with all the Magento’s product types which include Simple Product, Configurable Product, Bundle Product, Grouped Product, Downloadable Product and Virtual Product. It is also compatible with all the versions of Magento like Magento 1.3, Magento 1.4, Magento 1.5, Magento 1.6 and Magento 1.7.

The Custom Option Swatch Extension will prove to be remarkably useful in working with Magento and you can create your store even more customer friendly. This great extension while maintaining all the custom option function allows you to illustrate custom options as swatch image thumbnails in place of standard html elements.

The structural Requirements for this Custom Option Swatch Extension are:

1.    Well-suited with Magento 1.4x – 1.7x, also Professional and Enterprise.

2.    Configuration essential by the Color Swatch extension is the similar to standard configuration of configurable products in Magento.

3.    This software requires installation of ionCube loader.

Now, you can show your custom options as custom thumbnails that are created by you with the help of Custom Option Swatch, an additional custom option type on your Magento website

Magento REST API : A Superior Way to Incorporate Business Applications:

Magento REST API The REST API in Magento is a lay down of functions to which the developers can proceed upon requests and can obtain responses through the HTTP protocol.

As one of the parts of the Magento Enterprise 1.12 and Community 1.7 releases, the Magento REST API is launched especially for those traders who are in a quest of a speedy and reliable means to integrate more business applications within Magento Development companies.

The Magento REST API lets you to deal with customers, products, customer addresses, sales orders, inventory and many more using HTTP verbs like GET, PUT, POST and DELETE. The REST API adds value for better performance. It’s simple to use, easy for testing and troubleshooting.
Sources of REST:

The various sources of REST are basically the identities that are presented towards developer with the help of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). Every resource has a distinctive URL. The address and any kind of dealings take place at its URI. Various resources supported in CE 1.7.0.0 are mentioned below:

1. Customers: You can regain the record of customers and can create, update, or delete a customer.

2. Customer Addresses: Here, you can have an access to the list of customer addresses, and can create, update, or delete an address.

3. Products: Allows you to retrieve the list of products, create a simple product, and update or delete a product.

4. Product category: Get access to the list of categories that are allocated to a product and you can allocate or dislocate a category to a product.

5. Product Websites: Lets you to retrieve the list of websites assigned to a product and you can assign or unassigned a website to a product

6. Inventory: Take access to the list of stock items and can update a stock item.

7. Sales Orders: Here you can have an access to the list of sales order and all the information regarding that particular order.

8. Sales Order Items: Lets you to retrieve the items for a definite order.

9. Sales Order Addresses: Get list of billing and shipping addresses for an order.

10. Sales Order Comments: Get access to all the comments for a particular order.

Now, how to use REST API with Magento from the Magento store admin panel:

First of all, set up authorization to operate with resources for the three different user categories i.e. 1. Admin (backend logged-in user), 2. Customer (frontend logged-in user) and 3. Guest (non-logged-in frontend user). After doing this task, organize which elements will be permitted to retrieve or update for the various user types. At the end, register the third-party application and provide the information to the third-party application.

Create a Shipping Method Module In Magento

Shipping Method ModuleMagento is one of the best and well-to-do e-commerce platforms where you can find quite a lot of shipping methods. On the other hand, when you are having big e-commerce sites you may need to build up your own custom shipping methods.

Generating a custom shipping method is not so difficult; you just have to get all the necessary information regarding various functions that have to be use inside the shipping method class to put in various configuration selections.

Every shipping method can be prepared as separate module but if some methods could be used together or have same functionality than it can be combined in the same module.

Make sure that app/code/local is in PHP‘s include_path. For doing this, you need to carry out the following code:

<?php echo get_include_path();?>

Be certain you place this code anywhere after Magento was loaded.
Configuration:

You need to form app/code/local/YourCompany/NewModule/etc/config.xml:
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<config>
<modules>
<!– declare module’s version information –>
<YourCompany_NewModule>
<!– this version number will be used for database upgrades –>
<version>0.1.0</version>
</YourCompany_NewModule>
</modules>
<global>
<!– declare model group for new module –>
<models>
<!– model group alias to be used in Mage::getModel() –>
<newmodule>
<!– base class name for the model group –>
<class>YourCompany_NewModule_Model</class>
</newmodule>
</models>
<!– declare resource setup for new module –>
<resources>
<!– resource identifier –>
<newmodule_setup>
<!– specify that this resource is a setup resource and used for upgrades –>
<setup>
<!– which module to look for install/upgrade files in –>
<module>YourCompany_NewModule</module>
</setup>
<!– specify database connection for this resource –>
<connection>
<!– do not create new connection, use predefined core setup connection –>
<use>core_setup</use>
</connection>
</newmodule_setup>
</resources>
</global>
</config>

Now, create app/etc/modules/YourCompany_NewModule.xml:

<config>
<!– … –>
<modules>
<!– … –>
<!– declare YourCompany_NewModule module –>
<YourCompany_NewModule>
<active>true</active>
<codePool>local</codePool>
</YourCompany_NewModule>
<!– … –>
</modules>
<!– … –>
</config>

Now, create app/code/local/YourCompany/NewModule/Model/Carrier/ShippingMethod.php:

<?php

/**
* Our test shipping method module adapter
*/
class YourCompany_NewModule_Model_Carrier_ShippingMethod extends Mage_Shipping_Model_Carrier_Abstract
{
/**
* unique internal shipping method identifier
*
* @var string [a-z0-9_] */
protected $_code = ‘newmodule’;
/**
* Collect rates for this shipping method based on information in $request
*
* @param Mage_Shipping_Model_Rate_Request $data* @return Mage_Shipping_Model_Rate_Result
*/
public function collectRates(Mage_Shipping_Model_Rate_Request $request)
{
// skip if not enabled
if (!Mage::getStoreConfig(‘carriers/’.$this->_code.’/active’)) {
return false;
}
/**
* here we are retrieving shipping rates from external service
* or using internal logic to calculate the rate from $request
* you can see an example in Mage_Usa_Model_Shipping_Carrier_Ups::setRequest()
*/
// get necessary configuration values
$handling = Mage::getStoreConfig(‘carriers/’.$this->_code.’/handling’);
// this object will be returned as result of this method
// containing all the shipping rates of this method
$result = Mage::getModel(‘shipping/rate_result’);
// $response is an array that we have
foreach ($response as $rMethod) {
// create new instance of method rate
$method = Mage::getModel(‘shipping/rate_result_method’);
// record carrier information
$method->setCarrier($this->_code);
$method->setCarrierTitle(Mage::getStoreConfig(‘carriers/’.$this->_code.’/title’));
// record method information
$method->setMethod($rMethod[‘code’]);
$method->setMethodTitle($rMethod[‘title’]);
// rate cost is optional property to record how much it costs to vendor to ship
$method->setCost($rMethod[‘amount’]);
// in our example handling is fixed amount that is added to cost
// to receive price the customer will pay for shipping method.
// it could be as well percentage:
/// $method->setPrice($rMethod[‘amount’]*$handling/100);
$method->setPrice($rMethod[‘amount’]+$handling);
// add this rate to the result
$result->append($method);
}
return $result;
}
/**
* This method is used when viewing / listing Shipping Methods with Codes programmatically
*/
public function getAllowedMethods() {
return array($this->_code => $this->getConfigData(‘name’));
}
}

Now you need to facilitate your new shipping method in admin panel (System->Configuration->Shipping Methods).

How to Organize a Magento Error Page?

While working with Magento for a long time, a server side error like “error processing your request” page may take place, which is sometimes become very irritating. This error page should never appear to online customers on a live site for the reason that, this may alert the website attackers to attack your website, also there are chances for the users of your website to get confused seeing such a page and may not found your website user-friendly.

The responsible person of the website may not be aware of this error, except a customer contacts him and inform him regarding Magento error page. Now, you can make up the behavior of Magento in case of errors, as there are two major changes that have been introduced between Magento version 1.3 and 1.4, one is, these errors are no longer put on view by default and other is, the error managing has been moved from the report folders to a dedicated error folder in a standard install.

During development, be sure to facilitate the developer mode so that you’ll be able to see the errors directly on the page where they crop up. To perform this action in version 1.3, you just have to open the index.php in the root of your Magento setting up and take out the comment from the line:

#Mage::setIsDeveloperMode(true);

In version 1.4 and newer, as environment variable has been established that allow you to set developer mode on your test server, thus you need not to have different copies of index.php for different servers.

If an error develops the Magento can email this error to an important person and also exhibit a feedback form for the visitors requesting for details.

In the Version 1.3, to do the set up, follow these steps:

Go to the file

          /report/config.xml

Modify this line

      <action>print</action>

To

      <action>email</action>

And insert your email address in this line

      <email_address></email_address>

That’s it and you are done.

In Version 1.4, as report/config.xml has been substituted by errors/local.xml, what you have to do is, throughout a fresh installation there will be an error folder having a local.xml sample file, copy that file and rename this as local.xml and adjust this in the same manner as you have done earlier in version 1.3 followed by the steps as described above.

How to Use Magento Database Repair Tool

Time and again there may be the chances, where your Magento database can get distorted and you will be facing lots of errors while installing your Magento. Instead of wasting your time in fixing the database, which may wind up with an absolutely broken website, you should use the Magento Database Repair Tool, created by Magento core Team, which will surely help you in big time.

The Magento Database Repair Tool evaluates two databases i.e. reference and target. After comparing these two databases, this tool updates the target database so as to keep its structure same as the structure of reference database. This is done by performing the following methods:

  1. Adding up missing tables or restoring them to get the identical engine type and char set.
  2. Adding Missing fields or repairing them.
  3. Taking out incompatible data from tables that have broken foreign key references.
  4. Adding up missing foreign keys and indexes.

The Database Repair Tool is applied to fix the database of an existing Magento installation that contains any of the errors which are stated above. You just have to install the same version of Magento that you are using into a clean database. Use the new database as “reference” and existing database as “corrupted”.

The most important thing which you should always keep in your mind, make sure that you have tested the database repair tool on development environment before actually running it on production environment. Also, don’t forget to keep a backup of your original database prior to running database repair tool.

While the repairing process is going on, it is highly advisable to restrict the access to your website. By restricting your Magento instance to your IP address, the visitors including search spiders, will get the HTTP503 Service Unavailable error.

You have to generate a 503.php file in your Magento installation root as:

  1. <?php
  2. header(‘HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable’);
  3. header(‘Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8’);
  4. echo “503 Service Unavailable”;

After doing this, you have to add the rewrite rule in .htaccess or in Apache server configuration as follows:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^127.0.0.1$

RewriteRule  ! 503.PHP$ /503.PHP [L]

Where, 127.0.0.1 (backslashes ahead of dots) should be reinstated with your IP-address. As you save this .htaccess file or restore the Apache configuration, your site will be down until you bring back to original status.

Here are the Steps:

  1. Download Magento database repair tool archive from the download page
  2. Uncompress the archive
  3. Locate the magento-db-repair-tool-1.0.php into any folder on your server
  4. Take Backup of your present database so that you can restore it if anything goes wrong
  5. Duplicate it as new database on the same server. Say, “database2”
  6. Create an empty database, ”database3”
  7. Copy your whole Magento folder into a new one and install it into “database3”
  8. If you have by now constrained the access to your Magento instance, change your database records into “database3”, remove all the cache and start on Magento once: it will get installed automatically.

Currently, You have the duplicate copy of your original database in “database2” and empty Magento installed in”database3”

Now,

Run http://url-of-your-server/path-to-folder/magento-db-repair-tool-1.0.php

  1. Enter access credentials to “database2” as “corrupted” database and to “database3” as “reference” database
  2. Set table prefixes, if pertinent
  3. Press “Continue” and you will see result screen where you will see what was done to the “corrupted” database.

Don’t forget to remove the magento-db-repair-tool-1.0.php. Now, you can Access your website on browser and you are done.