Moving Magento Database to a New Server

I’ve been moving databases quite a lot recently, and the Magento database is a heavy one to lift. Based on recent experiences there’s two things you don’t want to miss. These tips are relevant for Magento 1.5, but should work on later versions.

Though Magento is built using the EAV structure, it is still a relational database at its core and as such its tables rely entirely on the existence of foreign keys. You can experience problems exporting and importing your database if foreign key checks are too rigid. In many cases a table with a required foreign key may not exist while part of the query is carried out.

In phpMyAdmin and most other database management systems it will be possible to disable foreign key checks so that constraints are exempt from the query. Simply check ‘Disable foreign key checks’ while exporting.

Once your database has imported you’ll need to run this query in order to establish access to the admin area. The store and website IDs need to be set 0 which somehow gets lost in translation during the move.

You can read the post here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5178066/error-404-not-found-in-magento-admin-login-page

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;UPDATE `core_store` SET store_id = 0 WHERE code='admin';UPDATE `core_store_group` SET group_id = 0 WHERE name='Default';UPDATE `core_website` SET website_id = 0 WHERE code='admin';UPDATE `customer_group` SET customer_group_id = 0 WHERE customer_group_code='NOT LOGGED IN';SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

These two steps should mean that your database has been correctly transferred.

Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at Ecommerce Web Design – have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Adam Moss Author Page

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Multiple Domains on Magento 1.3

This method has been covered elsewhere, but it’s certainly worth mentioning for developers looking for a multi-domain website but are stuck with a now ancient-looking Magento 1.3. My previous post about multiple domains on 1.4+ uses the .htaccess method of detecting the URL and running the correct website. On 1.3 however, this is not possible so you have to use PHP and modify the index.php file – see the comparison diagram below, which demonstrates the different ways stores are loaded in Magento between 1.3 and 1.4.

At the bottom of the file where the script calls Mage::run(); simply replace this with the following switch statement:

// Assign the website URL$site = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];switch ($site) {case 'www.myseconddomain.co.uk':Mage::run('domaintwo', 'website');break; default: Mage::run(); }

You can obviously insert as many cases as needed into the switch.

The next step is to ensure all cache is cleared otherwise your second site might not work. There’s a file called use_cache.ser in the following location which needs to be deleted:

app/etc/use_cache.ser

Magento will create a new one with the correct permissions once deleted. For developers working with Magento installations of version 1.4 and above, read this tutorial instead.

Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at E-commerce Website Design.

Adam Moss Author Page

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Imagine Challenge - The Competition Is Heating Up!

The Imagine Challenge is well underway, and we’ve already received some great entries.  But now that Imagine is SOLD OUT the competition has heated up! 

Submit a photo or 60 second video showing your passion for Magento, or the success you’ve had since you started using Magento for your chance to win a trip to Imagine! The Challenge will end on March 23rd, which leaves you two weeks to submit your entry. The entry with the most community votes will win a trip to the 2012 Imagine eCommerce Conference!

Visit the Imagine Challenge site for the complete rules and guidelines.

Check out the entries below for a quick preview of the many creative ways people have shown their passion or success!  And remember: If you see an entry you like, vote for it!

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PHP Developers: Fast-track Your Magento Learning Curve

Are you an experienced PHP developer interested in learning how to design customizations for the world’s most popular eCommerce platform? You are??? Then we’ve got some great news for you!

Magento U is proud to offer a new On-Demand course, Quick Start to Magento Customization. In this 4-hour On-demand course, students will learn to create a custom module and controller, and get helpful tips on how to avoid bugs and ensure your customization will be compatible with Magento upgrades. Students will come away with a fundamental understanding of how Magento implements the M, V and C in the MVC pattern.

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A Community That Runs Together, Stays Together

It’s become an unofficial tradition for Magento Community members to go for a run during any event they’re gathered at.  So for Imagine, the Community is organizing a group to run together in an official race on Saturday, April 21st! The Labor of Love race is being held by Calico Racing in Lovell Canyon, Las Vegas NV. Depending on your running level, you are invited to participate in either the 1/2 marathon or the 10k.

For more details on the race itself, including pricing and a map of the route, check out the official race website. Please make sure you register for the race on that website before the event. If you want to know which Community members are already planning to run, you can check out the unofficial Magento Meetup page or see who’s tracking their training through DailyMile.

Whether you’re participating in the run, or just cheering from the sidelines, pre-order your t-shirt featuring the race in true Magento style, and show you’re part of the Magento crowd!  Pre-order yours online at Wagento Creative by April 7th. The shirts will be available to pick up at the M Resort on Friday, April 20th (exact time and location to be announced). These shirts will not be available for purchase at the actual race!

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E.C. Kraus: A Home-Brewed Magento Success Story

Family-owned business E.C. Kraus has been providing supplies for making beer and wine at home since 1966. Recently the company asked Magento Solution Partner Groove Commerce to create an eCommerce store that would cater to the different needs of their two main customer groups – wine makers and beer brewers.

Using the Magento Enterprise platform, Groove Commerce built a dynamic site that gives all of E.C. Kraus’ customers exactly what they want. Wine lovers can now easily find the perfect testing equipment for crafting their ideal blend. Beer aficionados can pinpoint specialty grains for the perfect brew. And every customer gets one-click shopping, decreased load times, and better overall site performance.

Not only are customers happier; so is the staff. The new site gives E.C. Kraus employees the flexibility needed to provide the best possible service, with features like advanced contact management and the ability to add a free gift to every order.

Happy shoppers, happy employees, happy merchant…we’ll drink to that!

Have a Magento success story you’d like to share? Contact .

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Automate Your Testing with the Magento Test Automation Framework

Testing. Testing. Are you there? Good. Now that we’ve got your attention, we want to tell you about the new Magento Test Automation Framework, or TAF for short.

This software package is ideal for running repeated functional tests against a normally installed Magento application. And if you’re a developer or QA specialist, you’re in for a treat. You can quickly develop all kinds of tests for the current Magento version without having to tediously build an automation infrastructure.

Besides running repeated tests, Magento TAF can also be used to create tests and write test automation scripts. Test automation scripts created within the framework can be used for testing most Magento functionality. And we’re constantly updating the Selenium-based framework to cover even more tests and meet users’ broad needs.

In this latest release of the framework, we’ve introduced a robust set of new tests and capabilities:

We’ve created a comprehensive Smoke Test Suite that evaluates the full range of functionality of the Magento Community Edition. This suite covers all test cases that are run during Magento nightly builds and tested by our development team. And it’s designed specifically for developers to use and expand upon. Test failure errors happen. And when they do, Magento TAF captures and stores screenshots of any open pages in .png and html formats in the tmp/screenshot folder. If a JavaScript error occurs, the screenshot is captured and stored in the .png format. And Markup errors are captured and stored in the html format. The failed test name contains the class name, test name and a timestamp, this way it’s easy to retrieve the screenshot. And the full path to the screenshot is stored in a log next to the error message so it can be accessed directly. With Magento TAF, you can test as many UI areas as you’d like. This comes in especially handy when testing several store views or stores utilizing different designs. Each store – or store view – can have a unique UI map but operate with the original set of tests. This removes nesting and naming restrictions for UI map folders and allows users to organize them as they wish.

The UI areas can be determined in the local.yml file for each url to be used by Magento TAF. Based on user-defined urls, Magento TAF automatically detects which set of UI maps should be used and loads the relevant descriptors for the current page. With this enhancement, the tester doesn’t have to worry about switching between UI areas within the test body. Users can declare separate UI maps for non-Magento side services specific to their store and write tests in the same way they’re written for Magento services.

See the Installation Guide under “Example of config.yml File” for an example of a UI map area declaration. Please note, before your first run, search for the ‘YOUR CREDENTIALS’ string within the data folder and update that value with your account credentials.

Magento TAF’s newest features help take the task out of testing. And, even though it just came down the product pipeline, it’s already been adopted and put to good use by many developers. In fact, we have to give a virtual fist pump to Kristof Ringleff from Fooman and Nick Jones (punkstar) from Meanbee for all their contributions.

To download the Magento TAF, go to the Magento Test Automation Framework section at the bottom of this page:

If you’d like to read the complete repository, installation and configuration guidelines, check them out at:

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Come for the Training, Stay for Imagine!

Imagine what you can learn if you come to Las Vegas a few days early to attend our Fundamentals of Magento Development course…

That’s right, we are offering a unique opportunity to take our Fundamentals of Magento Development course in the days immediately before the Imagine Conference in Las Vegas. This 40 hour course covers the basics and then dives into topics such as Rendering, Working with Database in Magento, Entity-Attribute-Value model and AdminHTML.

When you leave the course at the end of the week, you will have a better understanding of the Magento architecture, MVC and data models, how to work with Magento modules, and how to customize and extend Magento to ensure the best upgrade path for the websites they extend.

Following the course, you can spend some time relaxing in Las Vegas gearing up for Imagine!

Register now to secure your spot. Seats are limited and this class (like the conference) will sell out! http://www.magentocommerce.com/training/descriptions#fundamentals-of-magento-development

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Meet Tobias Vogt: Magento Certified Developer

We return to Berlin for today's Certified Developer Profile. Tobias Vogt is an active member of Berlin's Magento community. Not only has Tobias demonstrated his skills via the certification exam; he also shares his expertise via a Magento-related blog and podcast.

Magento: When did you start working with Magento?

Tobias: In 2008, our agency, code-x, decided to move our business model to an open-source system. After comparing several options, we chose Magento. I was responsible for implementing Magento into our agency structure. We moved quickly and implemented new projects with Magento, and it has gone very well.

Magento: What do you enjoy most about being a Magento developer?

Tobias: First of all, Magento is really fun to work with! I enjoy the expandability and the projects that the ecosystem has to offer. Another great factor is the fantastic Magento community. It is really cool to see the community grow and prosper. Plus we have developed our Blog http://www.webguys.de/ into one of the largest German-speaking blogs on Magento, which makes me feel good.

Magento: How does it feel to be one of the first Magento Certified Developers? How do you think it will help your career?

Tobias: Obviously I am looking to gain an edge during project pitches. Magento certification has already come in handy when competing for certain projects. The certification makes a big impression with customers. When all else is equal, we can pull the certification card and win the game.

Magento: What else would you like our readers to know?

Tobias: I try to stay active in the German Magento community. In addition to my Magento Blog, I also maintain a German based Podcast (http://www.magento-podcast.de/) with Damian Luszczymak.

Magento has had a big influence on my life!

You can contact Tobias at .

Developers: find out how you can join the growing ranks of Magento Certified Developers:

View the original article here

Magento Joins The Small Business Web – Celebrate With Us @ SXSW!

We are proud to announce that Magento has joined The Small Business Web, an industry association dedicated to enabling small merchants to successfully use technology to compete with their larger counterparts.

The Magento eCommerce platform helps businesses of every size access best-in-breed commerce capabilities to compete effectively online. Our platform has helped tens of thousands of small businesses to reach more customers and profitably grow their businesses.

It’s only natural that we are excited to join The Small Business Web, an ally who also shares our commitment to helping small businesses succeed through the effective use of technology. We look forward to working with this association on enabling more small businesses to thrive and prosper!

We’re hosting a party with the Small Business Web; Our partners, developers, and eCommerce industry peers are invited to attend to talk shop! Here are the specifics:

E-commerce Hoedown at SXSWSunday, March 11th5:00-8:00 PMCoyote Ugly Patio 501 East 6th Street Austin

As space is limited, we encourage you to RSVP asap. Hope to see you there!

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Magento Extension (Free): Latest Tweet from Twitter

We’ve just released our latest extension “Latest Tweet” for Magento. Now you can easily integrate your twitter feed into the left/right column of your website with some simple options in the backend. Here is the link to the Twitter for Magento on Magento Connect.

We’ve improved this extension by allowing you the ability to:

disable links in your tweetsmake links nofollowmake links open in new windowshow up to 10 latest tweets

The (free!) latest tweet extension shows your the tweet, the link and also the time “ago” it was tweeted.

You can download this extension the Twitter for Magento on Magento Connect – but if you’d like to install it manually you can download the files from here.

Thanks for visiting the Magento Blog here at E-Commerce Web Design – home of the Magento Fox!

Robert Kent Author Page

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Our Free Magento Extensions…So Far

For those of you who are new to the blog I’d like to take a moment to show you our competely Free Magento Extensions, what they do and how to get them.

Here at E-commerce web design we feel obliged to help the Magento Community in as many ways as possible – developing Free Magento Extensions based on problems in the Magento code or opportunities that we have spotted for all the types of businesses we develop Magento sites for.

We recommend downloading our extensions from Magento Connect as whenever we update our extensions if you have downloaded via Magento Connect you will be notified of the latest updates.

Here is a round-up of all our extensions so far!

The free shipping incentive allows you to specify free shipping in the back-end of your Magento site – all you need to do is enter your minimum qualifying price and the extension does the rest! You will see a new block appear in your left/right column that will calculate the remaining amount left to spend in order to qualify for free shipping.

You can download the files from our Magento Free Shipping Incentive page or download Free Shipping Incentive from Magento Connect.

The Mass landscape shipping labels extension allows you to mass-select your orders/invoices and select from a drop-down “print shipping label”. This saves the administrator the job of entering each order and printing each shipping label individually.

You can download the files from our Magento Shipping Label Extension page or download Mass Landscape Shipping Labels Extension from Magento Connect.

The Magento SEO Sitemap Extension is our most popular extension at the moment. It renders a new page that automatically lists your CMS pages and Categories and Sub-Categories automatically as you create them. This is a valued alternative to the clunky magento categories sitemap that comes by default.

You can download the files from our Dynamic SEO Sitemap for Magento page or download Magento SEO Sitemap from Magento Connect.

The Optimised Contacts Page extension enabled you to set meta data and other company information on the standard contacts page of Magento. Normally this page is a big issue as it is not as customisable as any other CMS page. This extension makes your life easier for customising and keeping this important page ranking well in the search engines.

You can download the files from our Optimised Contacts Page Extension page or download Optimised Contacts Extension from Magento Connect.

The Order Before X extension enabled you to set a time when you can offer a certain promotion – such as next day delivery. The extension then shows a countdown clock until that time – applying to your site a sense of urgency for checkout. The extension also comes with customisable text and the option to disable the extension from showing on certain days.

You can download the files from our Order Before X Extension page or download Order Before X from Magento Connect.

The Optimised Product Addition extension removed the fiddly bits from the “add product” feature in Magento. It sets as default the product to “enabled” sets stock to “in stock” and there is also an experimental feature that attempts to auto-increment your SKU field if your database works with it.

You can download the files from our Optimised Product Addition page or download Optimised Product Addition from Magento Connect.

The Latest Tweet From Twitter extension does exactly what is says on the tin! You can enter your Twitter username and it will grab the last 1-10 tweets and display them in the sidebar. You also set advanced options in the admin area such as displaying links in your tweets and opening links in new windows.

You can download the files from our Magento Twitter Extension page or download Free Magento Twitter Extension from Magento Connect.

We will continue to create Free Extensions all the time and we’d really like to hear from you if you have an idea for an extension or just a problem on an existing site that an extension would be suitable for – as long as it will help others with the same problem of course!

Thanks for visiting the Magento Blog here at E-commerce web design. Home of the Magento Fox!

Robert Kent Author Page

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Login to Magento via Curl (Cross Domain)

If you have ever wanted to be able to login your customers from an external domain you can do so in two obvious ways:

However if you want to be able to log the customer in without them filling out a form then perhaps the following method is good for you?

Firstly we need to have the correct username+password for our customer – as long as you have this it shouldn’t be a problem.

On our external domain we can create a new file – something like crossdomainlogin.php.

In this php file paste in the following:

session_start();$string = "login[username]=".urlencode("me@mymagentodomain.co.uk")."&login[password]=".urlencode("password");$ch = curl_init();curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://www.mymagentodomain.co.uk/customer/account/loginPost');curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIE, session_name().'='.session_id());curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIESESSION, true);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $string);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);$output = (string) curl_exec($ch);curl_close($ch);preg_match('/frontend=(.+); expires=/i', $output, $matches);$temp = $matches[0];$sid = str_replace(array("frontend=","; expires="), "", $temp);//echo $sid;header('Location: http://www.mymagentodomain.co.uk/customer/account/?SID='.$sid);

What the above code does is:

Log’s you in via CurlStores the new session IDTransfers you to the Magento site with the new session ID stamped to your URL

I hope you have enjoyed this blog and find it useful – thanks for visiting the Magento Blog here at e-commerce web design, home of the Magento Fox!

Robert Kent Author Page

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Get Magento Product Attribute Label

Half way through writing a customised grouped product page for Magento, I realised that I’d never come across getting attribute labels before. I already had the attribute code loaded, so I just needed the script to load it by that attribute code. It turns out that product attribute labels is a bit of a tumbleweed subject in the online community so I dug it out of Mage/Eav/Model:

$product->getResource()->getAttribute('my_attribute_code')->getStoreLabel();

It makes echoing out product attributes a much more dynamic affair. Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at Ecommerce Web Design.

Adam Moss Author Page

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Simple Payment Module Extended: With Information

A couple of months back I wrote a basic payment module for capturing an order, which allows users to pay over the phone. This was all well and good, but perhaps some additional information needs to go along with this payment method? In my case I needed a BACS payment option, which comes with instructions (such as who to pay!). This module was easy to make because it’s is virtually identical to the check/money order method.

I’m going to miss out a lot of the instructions for creating this module and just pick out the key points, because large parts of it are the same as my last post about this. The files are all available to download here:

DOWNLOAD bacs-payment-module.zip (33KB)

Here are the module files required:

Block/Form/Bacs.phpBlock/Info/Bacs.phpetc/config.xmletc/system.xmlModel/Method/Bacs.php

Frontend files required:

payment/form/bacs.phtmlpayment/info/bacs.phtml

Admin files required:

Below is an overview of some of the important aspects of some of the files:

Creare_Bacs_Block 1 bacs/method_bacs pending

We need to add a new field to the form in the configuration which sets up this payment method. In this example I will call it ‘instructions’. This simply gets added to the existing fields in system.xml. I add it as a textarea.

Instructions textarea 2 1 1  1

This will result in an admin interface similar to the one below:

The model file has been moved into a ‘Method’ file to properly define it as an extension of the ‘Model_Method’ class.

class Creare_Bacs_Model_Method_Bacs extends Mage_Payment_Model_Method_Abstract{ protected $_code = 'bacs'; protected $_formBlockType = 'bacs/form_bacs'; protected $_infoBlockType = 'bacs/info_bacs'; protected $_isInitializeNeeded = true; protected $_canUseInternal = false; protected $_canUseForMultishipping = false; public function assignData($data) { $details = array(); if ($this->getInstructions()) { $details['instructions'] = $this->getInstructions(); } if (!empty($details)) { $this->getInfoInstance()->setAdditionalData(serialize($details)); } return $this; } public function getInstructions() { return $this->getConfigData('instructions'); }}

A getInstructions() function will be used to return the user-configured instructions to the Form and Info pages. The final result will mean that the instructions appear when a user select this payment method during checkout. The instructions will also be present on the order email as well as in the admin area.

If you’d like to download the module and contribute any ideas/improvements, please let me know. Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at Ecommerce Web Design.

Adam Moss Author Page

View the original article here

Performing Admin Function outside Magento

For those of you who wish to use a script or otherwise to delete a product or perhaps perform another “admin only” function outside of the Magento installation you need to do the following, which will obviously boot up Magento for you to start using.

require_once('app/Mage.php'); //Path to Magentoumask(0);Mage:app();

To delete a product you would normally then perform the following:

$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($id);$product->delete();

However you may notice that on some versions of Magento you will be slapped in the face with the following message:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Mage_Core_Exception’ with message ‘Cannot complete this operation from non-admin area.’

This means that some functions within the Magento arsenal can only be performed via the admin side of the site. To do this outside of Magento you will need to change:

// Mage:app();// ToMage::app("default")->setCurrentStore(Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID);

This will boot up the admin side of you Magento store – and will allow you to delete your products! Thanks for visiting the Magento Blog here at E-commerce Web Design, home of the Magento Fox!

Robert Kent Author Page

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Magento Extension: Optimised Contacts

One thing has always bothered me about a fresh Magento install, and that’s knowing that there’s a sorry-looking contacts page pre-installed with no meta data and no other company details. Just a form which is plain as arsecheeks.

I developed this simple extension with two objectives:

Allow users to set the Page Title and Meta Data of their contacts pageAllow users to display standard other company details on this page (phone number, Twitter, address etc…)

The extension is now available on Magento connect: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/optimised-contacts-1068.html

Verssion 0.1.0 can also be downloaded here: Creare_Optimisedcontacts.zip

This module has been successfully tested on Magento 1.4 & 1.5It should work no problem on 1.6 too, but hasn’t been tested yet (let me know)

The module makes use of the company details that you have already set in your Magento configuration, and it adds a few more. You can now enter your Twitter name, Fax number and display email address. This is located in Configuration > General > Store Information

On the frontend it is displayed underneath the contact form. It wasn’t possible to put it above the contact form and under the

tag without overwriting the entire file, which I wanted to avoid.

The next feature is the ability to set page title, meta description and meta keywords values. Your contact us page should be treated as a very important page when it comes to SEO – Google often likes to add pagelinks to contact pages due to their popularity with web surfers.

This can all be set in Configuration > Contacts > Contact Page SEO

Couldn’t be much simpler really eh? This is only version 0.1.0, so there’ll be plenty of updates and improvements coming out in the future, and it will be available on Magento Connect very soon.

Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at Ecommerce Web Design – I look forward to any feedback.

Adam Moss Author Page

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Our Extensions Page on Magento Connect

Look out for our extensions page on the Magento Commerce website! You can find us here:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/developer/EcommerceWD

We’ve got plenty planned but if you are after a specific extension do let us know!

Here’s a little taste of the kind of extensions we are thinking up:

Buy now Pay Later checkout extensionGet A Quote featureAuto-Email Order Summary

Just leave a comment if you wish for us to create an extension for you – odd’s are that it’ll be free if we believe it will benefit us and our customers too!

Thanks for visiting the Magento Blog here at E-commerce Web Design, home of the Magento Fox.

Robert Kent Author Page

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Meet Magento UK Review

I’ll be honest and say that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen the hour of 4.30am. I’m sure most would agree that leaving Rugby train station for a 6am train to London is not the best way to start what’s going to be a very long and absorbing day. However that’s what myself, Rob and James had to do in order to attend the first ever annual Meet Magento conference in the UK. When your arrival photo of Big Ben is still in the dark, you know you’re there too early…

We arrived at the QE2 venue at around 8.30am following a great bacon and egg roll from a nearby cafe, which was much needed following 2 hours of travelling. Upon arriving on the 5th floor the room seemed quite empty and a number of the stalls were still being set up. Many familiar companies were present, the likes of Sage Pay, Aheadworks, Rackspace, Webshopapps and Sweet Tooth among them.

As we entered the room first, our seats could not have been much better (2nd row, middle) – this certainly helped my pretty poor eyesight! The first conference kicked off slightly behind schedule with Bob Schwartz and Roy Rubin providing a nice insight into the history of Magento and what’s happening right now with the company. The Enterprise Premium edition was announced by Roy during the second presentation (but no mention of cost), which promises to offer unprecedented levels of support and better licensing with multiple installations – released next month.

The next gentleman to take to the stage was John Lunn of X.Commerce, who presented very well the benefits and opportunities that X.Commerce is bringing. Standing confidently in jeans & T-Shirt he brought a welcome less-formal feel to proceedings which seemed to go down well. There’s a lot here to cover so I’ll be posting next week about my thoughts on X.Commerce.

Following a swift refreshments break the second round of presentations had begun, starting with the cross border customer panel. They weren’t the most captivating part of the event, but I enjoyed the creative slideshow used by the Mothercare/Radical team. Neil Hamilton’s presentation about the future of predictive ecommerce was very interesting, worthy in fact of a separate post. The audience breathed a sigh of relief at the end when he reassured us about potential cookie legal issues.

The Rackspace showing was completely focused on their cloud hosting offerings and went into a lot of detail. Perhaps some of the specialist ‘server-talk’ went over other people’s heads as it did mine? Nonetheless they got their point across nicely.

The lunch break was a great chance for us to speak to a number of the stands about their products and make a few connections. I was particularly impressed with Josh from Webshopapps, Jenny from Sage Pay and the folks at Campaign Commander. In fact we were so busy that we missed the start of the third round of presentations. As a side-note, the view from the conference centre was awesome! (see my pic below)

We joined half way through Sweet Tooth’s talk on how to reward your customers properly through loyalty schemes. I think these guys are the only ones doing something like this so it must’ve been a great plug for business.

After the final refreshment break we were treated to a very entertaining and informative talk from Roger Willcocks with his 50 tips for increasing sales. Many of the points were common sense and some where fairly straightforward SEO standards, but they were all valid and very well explained.

The next two presentations were decent, I found it difficult to concentrate on the high amount of data being thrown at me during the abandoned cart presentation. Serves me right for getting up at 4.30am.

With everyone’s thoughts drifting towards the aftershow party, the wrap-up by Bob and Roy was nicely delivered, though the question and answer session never really got going. There was quite an unsual video played from a musical Magento fan who decided to write a Magento-inspired cover of Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive. To be fair it was pretty awesome.

We were treated to a surprising moment when Rob’s business card was selected to win a free Magento hoodie at the end of the day. If anyone deserves the title of ‘Mage_Wizz’ it’s Rob.

So, to the aftershow party – possibly the most surreal part of the event. Expectations weren’t too high as we breezed past McDonalds and the Namco arcade on the Thames riverside, but we were blown away by the event once it got going. We had to leave early due to our railway commitments, but getting to meet Roy at the end was a great highlight to a fantastic day.

In summary, the event was great to be a part of and it has certainly reinforced my passion for Magento as a platform. As accommodating as Virgin trains were, I think next time a hotel is in order so I’m not zombified again the next day. Bring on Meet Magento 2012!

Adam Moss Author Page

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Magento Fraud Prevention

The problem with fraud apart from it being absolutely dispicable is the fact that it’s happening right under people’s noses and they’re not doing the simple things needed to prevent it. It’s the ecommerce equivalent of having a stranger look after your wallet for 5 mins and not checking that the £50 still in there when you get it back.

A fraudulent transaction on your Magento store can instantly leave merchants tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket, which in some cases could leave them in dire straits. It’s something that should be protected against in every way possible. As well as extra vigilance when handling orders there are also some useful tools that you can install into your Magento site to help combat against fraud. Below are a few tips to watch out for…

The most common targets for fraud are your most expensive items. If your AOV is about £40, then you suddenly get a £4,000 order, get it fully checked out first! Another thing to watch out for is large quantities of the same product being ordered. If someone is trying to order 30 bluray home cinema players for delivery to China, alarm bells should be ringing.

This counts double if you don’t normally ship to other countries. If you’re a UK store and the order is carried out in Tokyo and to be delivered to Kansas – you’d be foolish not to find that suspicious.

If you’re contacted before an order is placed you’ll often find the email will be badly written and will mention their availability for payment, which is not something that customers traditionally come forward with.

If the customer has paid a £90 delivery charge for the next day delivery of a hot tub, it’s fair to question why someone would need it so quickly – unless the delivery address is Hugh Hefner’s mansion. Also if your courier finds that the customer is not home when they deliver the item, they usually leave a pickup slip. This is another common methods used by fraudsters because they can collect the goods away from the property in question.

Now that you’re going to be much more vigilant with your orders, why not go a bit further and use the following extensions and payment gateways to get yourself better protected.

What BlockThatProxy does is it monitors the customers checking out on your store. It requires a paid subscription, but you get a lot of tools for your money. Firstly it will email to warn you if someone is ordering from a proxy or a blacklisted IP address. You also have the option to add a separate order confirmation page for suspicious customers – this means that you can force them to confirm their order.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/Wickings/extension/4560/blockthatproxy

This extension is a simple one, using GeoIP it can block products from being sold in certain countries based on your very own Access Control List. This eliminates one of the biggest causes, as mentioned earlier – international fraud. Got a problem with fraudulent transactions in France? Unlike the England rugby team, you can block France’s access.

http://www.fmeextensions.com/extensions/catalog/geoip-country-lock-products.html

We all like scoring stuff – when I read videogame reviews I go straight to the rating and very rarely read the writeup. Not reading the fine details is probably why I end up with a bunch of games I never complete. Directshop Solutions have come up with an excellent extension which provides each order with a score out of 100. The higher the score, the more issues the order has with fraud and therefore the more your concern should be raised. It allows you to control the risk limits and even to block IP addresses.

You have to sign up for a Maxmind account to use this extension, but the extension itself is relatively cheap.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/Directshop/extension/1394/directshop_fraudscreening_featuring_maxmind

All respectable payment gateway providers will now be signed up with 3D secure, an extra level of security which can be enforced during checkout. Not only does it require a password from customers, but it matches the Postcode and CV2 number. An absolutely essential addition to your checkout.

Ebizmarts and Sage Pay have integrated it into their gateway to perfection.

It’s not as if we’re trying to prevent the events of Die Hard 4.0, it’s just a few common sense steps that will ensure that your store will never be a victim of fraud. If you follow all the advice listed above you’ll be fine. My personal recommendation is BlockThatProxy combined with 3D Secure – that along with being extra vigilant will be enough (Bruce Willis not required).

If you know of any further solutions to this issue, please let me know in the comments. Hope this has been helpful, thanks for reading the Magento Blog at E-commerce Website Design.

Adam Moss Author Page

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Sorting Product List with Integer Attributes

‘Sorting Product List with Integer Attibutes’… bit of a mouthful ain’t it? There’s a bit of a limitation with Magento’s sort feature when it comes to custom attributes. It will normally sort our text strings alphabetically without a problem, but if your value is an integer Magento will still treat it as a string. This means that your numbers will be about as organised as my suitcase after a holiday:

10010002002200300400

Not ideal is it? I’m hoping that Magento will fix this by the next release – it only needs to be an extra attribute option which defines any values as an integer. It is something which could easily be mastered with an extension, but I personally think it’s more of a core requirement. The good news is that there’s a short term solution which works just as well. Simply use the attribute type of ‘Price’ when you’re creating your attribute.

The next issue is that your echoed attributes will show in currency format: 100.00, but the PHP round function will format it nicely for frontend purposes.

$attribute = $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('attribute_name')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);echo round($attribute);

Would be nice for Magento if gets this sorted for the next release, in the meantime this will do a job for you. Thanks for reading the Magento Blog at E-commerce Website Design.

Adam Moss Author Page

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