Author: Extendware Team

Magento “Can’t get filling percentage” memcached issue

Extendware Team

Some Magento store admins report that Magento is returning this exception when using memcached as a backend for either the Magento cache or the Magento Full Page Cache. This issue has its roots in the Zend Framework which returns this exception if memcache fails to return its extended stats.

To resolve this is fairly simple. All you need to do is edit the file [Magento root]/lib/Zend/Cache/Backend/Memcached.php and replace the getFillingPercentage() method with the below:

What exactly does this do?

It will make an additional attempt to get the filling percentage and if it cannot determine the filling percentage then 100 is returned which indicates it is full. In this way there will not be an exception thrown during the temporary periods when filling percentage cannot be determined.

Quick Extension Overview

Full-Page-CacheFull Page Cache reduces your Magento store’s First Byte Time, Increases your web server request rate, reduces database load, and makes your store much more responsive. Extendware’s Caching solution is the best Magento Caching Performance Extension you can buy to speed up your store and easily pays for itself by saving you money rather than buying expensive hardware solutions to increase your Magento store optimization rates.

Magento Collection Filter by Visible Products

Extendware Team

If you are working on a custom project you might want to create a custom block and only show products that are visible. To do this is actually very simple in Magento. All you need to do is use the following code:

Don’t spend time re-inventing the wheel. Have a look at our Magento Admin Product Grid extension. For example, did you know you can use Magento product grid extension to more easily mark products visible or not visible directly in the grid?

Quick Extension OverviewEditable-Product-Grid-(for-web)

Extendware’s Magento Admin Product Grid extension allows you to easily filter and edit your products within the product grid. You can add / remove columns, change the ordering of columns, filter by new attributes or categories, and much more. Editable Product Grid turns your Product Grid into a powerful editing tool.

Improving First Byte Time in Magento

Extendware Team

Full-Page-CacheFirst Byte Time is very important for a stores usability and search engine ranking. Improving the First Byte Time can improve customer satisfication and rankings in search engines. The end result is more revenue for the store.

What exactly is First Byte Time (FBT)?

First Byte Time is one aspect of load time. Load time = First Byte Time + Download Time. In general, a First Byte Time is dependent on how fast your hosting platform is and the size of your Magento store. In addition, some extensions can slow First Byte Time. As bottlenecks increase the First Byte Time will also increase. In Magento the primary bottleneck is the database and in general waiting for the database is what causes most of the slow speed.

How can First Byte Time be improved?

The easiest way to improve First Byte Time is to use our Magento Full Page Cache. With our extension, the FBT can be drastically reduced. In some cases by as much as 100x. The page cache works by reducing load on the database and reducing processing of the page generation. The end result is a faster site and reduced server load.

Features of Extendware Page Cache?

The Extendware Full Page Cache is the fastest and most flexible page cache available for Magento. It even outperforms the Magento Enterprise Cache. It does this because it is multi-leveled. The primary cache does not even require sessions or database. The secondary cache supports advanced hole punches for dynamic content. The end result is the fastest store possible. Review the product page for a full list of features.

Extendware offers an array of performance extensions that affect different aspects of performance. Review all our Magento extensions to improve your store even more.

Quick Extension Overview

Full Page Cache reduces your Magento store’s First Byte Time, Increases your web server request rate, reduces database load, and makes your store much more responsive. Extendware’s Caching solution is the best Magento Caching Performance Extension you can buy to speed up your store and easily pays for itself by saving you money rather than buying expensive hardware solutions to increase your Magento store optimization rates.

Magento Review Reminder

Extendware Team

Review-Reminder-(for-web)Getting your products reviewed by real customers can boost sales significantly. Unfortunately, many customers forget to write reviews. Magento Review Reminder will help solve this issue for you by sending emails to customers after they have placed an order and reminding them to write a review.

The extension is very simple to use. You can send a series of reminders to customers in order to remind them to review and you can even include a coupon in the email.

Quick Overview

Review Reminder allows you to remind your customers to leave a review about the products in their order. You can send an unlimited number of follow-up emails and even attach a coupon to the follow-up to encourage reviews.

 

Magento Product Attachments

Extendware Team

Product-Attachment-(for-web)Some products such as electronics, software, appliances, etc, might have electronic user guides, license agreements, and more. Magento Product Attachments will enable you to upload and associate these files with products, so that your customers can download them.

The extension is very simple to use. Attachments can be categorized and can be restricted by user group. Download count statistics can also be shown for each attachment and an attachment can be associated with multiple products.

Here is how an attachment will look on the frontend where customers can download it:

Product Attachments

Quick Extension Overview

Easily associate files with products which make it easy to include user guides, software downloads, and other digital content that might be associated with the product you are selling with Extendware’s Magento Product Attachments extension. The popularity or download count of an attachment is also recorded.

Stopping Spam in Magento

Extendware Team

Spam is very annoying. Unfortunately, running a popular platform like Magento will make your store vulnerable to spam as bots exist that target Magento store. The biggest problem with spam is that it requires you to filter reviewed, support emails, etc, which wastes your time. Fortunately, we have a couple Magento extensions that can reduce spam in your store. There are two basic strategies:

Adding a CAPTCHA to forms

This is the most common strategy to stop automated bots from submitting forms. Our Magento captcha extension is the best solution to this. You can add either a Google reCAPTCHA or an Open Captcha to your contact form. You can also disable it for logged in users so it is less annoying to users.

Creating honey pots to block bad bots

The other strategy is to entice bots to submit data to hidden forms and identify them as a result. Once identified, they can be blocked from your site. Our Magento bot blocker extension accomplishes this for you. In addition, it will rewrite existing forms to make it difficult for automated bots to understand how to submit them. Bot blocker also has the added advantage of preventing bad bots from scraping your site for information as they will be banned once identified.

Quick Extension Overview

Stop spam bots and other bad bots that spam your store and increase your server load by repeatedly crawling your store with Extendware’s Bot Blocker extension. Automated and easy to use solution to block bad bots, free up server resources, and reduce the spam that is sent to your store.

Update Product Inventory Programmatically in Magento

Extendware Team

Using our Magento product grid extension or Magento bulk product editing extension can make it easy to update product information. However, sometimes you need ultimate flexibility that is only possible with a script. If you need to update product inventory programmatically you can use the following:

In this script you will need to set the $productId and $qty to the appropriate value. This script will only update the qty if the product inventory is managed. In addition, it will set the Stock Availability based on the qty status.

Need a more full featured store? Have a look at our Magento extensions.

Quick Admin Product Grid Overview

Extendware’s Magento Admin Product Grid extension allows you to easily filter and edit your products within the product grid. You can add / remove columns, change the ordering of columns, filter by new attributes or categories, and much more. Editable Product Grid turns your Product Grid into a powerful editing tool.

Quick Bulk Product Updating Overview

Effectively manage your products by using Bulk Product Updating. Easily bulk assign categories, product links, change product prices, and more. The Extendware Magento Bulk Product Updating extension will simplify and speed up your product management admin duties so you can get back to what you do best, selling.

Debugging Blank White Screen in Magento

Extendware Team

We have seen blank screen issue a few times in Magento. It seems to be a problem that is fairly common. There are a few ways to debug this and a few potential causes. The absolute first thing you must do is view your PHP information and ensure that that display_errors and error_log is defined.

How to view PHP configuration

To view your PHP configuration you can upload a file named phpinfo.php with the following data and then view the file in your browser:

Once logging and display errors is enabled, then the reason for the error will should log in your PHP error log and then you can take steps to resolve it.

What if there are no error logs?

Magento has its own error handler located at [Magento root]/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Functions.php defined by the function mageCoreErrorHandler(). Sometimes this custom error handler will fail to output the error. The most likely cause of this is when the script runs out of memory.

To ensure there is sufficient memory look at your PHP information for the max_memory field and ensure it is set to at least 256MB. Whatever its current settings try to raise it and test.

Some other potential resolutions including:

    • Deleting the cache- execute rm -rf [Magento root]/var/cache/ to delete the cache
    • Ensure file permissions are correct
    • Ensure the short_open_tag is enabled just in case your theme uses this

If you ever experience issues with extensions you should look at the Magento extension conflict extension which can help resolve rewrite conflicts.

Quick Extension Overview

Extension conflict enables store owners and developers to quickly see if there are any potential conflicts in the store and it can also provide the steps to resolve the conflict. In addition to rewrite conflicts it will display information about the store such as observers and PHP information.

How to Put Magento in Maintenance Mode

Extendware Team

What is Magento Maintenance Mode?

Ideally, maintenance mode is a way to display a nice message to users about your site while maintenance is being conducted. It should allow you and administrators to continue to access the store so you can test features and performance before going live.

What do I need to put my Magento store in Maintenance Mode?

To put Magento into maintenance you will want our Magento Maintenance Mode extension. With this extension you can:

  • Show a friendly message to users indicating the site is in maintenance
  • Ensure that the admin area of the store still works and anyone logged into the admin can view the frontend
  • Whitelist IP addresses using advance rules so particular IP addresses can still view the frontend
  • Show a warning on the frontend to remind you that the store is in offline mode.

How do I put my Store in Maintenance Mode?

The process is simple. Simply follow these steps:

  1. Go to Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Maintenance Mode -> Configuration in your store backend.
  2. Under the General fieldset set the Status to Enabled. Your store will now be in maintenance mode

Remember, you will need maintenance mode extension in order to accomplish this task.

Quick Extension Overview

Easily put the frontend of your store in maintenance mode while you are working on your store. Logged in administrators and anyone on your IP whitelist can easily access the frontend of the store even when in Magento Maintenance Mode.

How to Change Favicon in Magento

Extendware Team

I would guess that 30% of stores leave the default Magento favicon. Changing this is quite important as many stores are using the default icon which means your store has nothing to differentiate itself. Follow this guide to change your favicon.

What is a favicon?

You might asking what a favicon is. It is the image that is displayed in the browser tab when accessing your site and it is also displayed when a user bookmarks your site. Here is the favicon of Extendware:

Favicon Browser Tab

Notice the small yellow graphic in the top left corner of the browser tab? That is the favicon.

How to change the favicon

Changing the favicon is simple. Just follow these steps:

  1. Click System -> Configuration in the backend of your store
  2. In the left hand menu click Design
  3. Click the HTML Head fieldset and you will see a form like the following:
    html-head-configuration

To change the favicon simply click the “Browse” button for the Favicon Icon field and upload a new image. The new image must be 16px by 16px or 32px by 32px.