Category: Magento Technical Tutorials

Secure Magento admin login with two-factor authentication

Extendware Team

Two-Factor-AuthenticationTwo-Factor Authentication is a great way to secure your Magento admin area. Imagine if a hacker or someone else gains access to your backend? Not only could they destroy data and harass customers, but they could steal valuable business data and the end result could be customers lose confidence in your store. The best two factor authentication is using Google authenticator for Magento.

What is two-factor authentication?

Two-factor authentication increases the security of your Magento login by requiring an additional authentication method. Normally, you would input your password only. With two-factor authentication that is compatible with Google authenticator you would also input a 1 time access code in addition. This access code changes every 60 seconds, so it is nearly impossible to hack your login. By combining these two methods (two factors) your login is much more secure.

How do I enable two factor authentication for Magento?

You should install the Two-Factor Authentication Magento Extension for your store and then go to System -> Permissions -> Users and enable it for specific users.

Great! What else can I do for a secure backend?

In addition to using the Google Authenticator Magento extension you can change your store admin URL. Leaving your store admin URL at yourstore.com/admin is bad for security. To resolve this, simply edit the file at app/etc/local.xml and change contact us.

Quick Overview

Protect your store from key loggers, connection sniffing, unprotected wifi connections, and other threats with our two-factor authentication system. If you ever login to your store over wifi or on a public computer, then you urgently need this extension.

Magento Image Optimization

Extendware Team

Image-OptimizationMagento Image Optimization is an important performance enhancement that will speed up your Magento page load time. The easiest way to optimize all your Magento images without affecting your existing images is to use the Magento Image Optimization extension for Magento.

Why and when is image optimization important in Magento?

Image optimization affects every single page load. The reason for this is that each page includes unique images and as a result it cannot be cached by the browser well. In addition, low bandwidth and high latency connections such as those used by mobile devices will be benefited a lot from image optimization.

How do I enable image optimization in Magento?

It is simple. Follow these steps:

  1. Purchase Magento Image Optimization for Magento and install it in your store
  2. In your store backend go to Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Image Optimization -> Configure and click the “Auto Configure” button. That’s it!

Quick Overview

Images are very important for online stores, but unnecessarily large images can slow down the user experience and reduce search engine rankings. Image Optimization will optimize your images and reduce their size without sacrificing image quality, so that your site images are faster loading.

Sorting Products by Newest in Magento

Extendware Team

Sorting products by newest is a great way to increase sales especially for repeat customers. Many times a customer will come and want to just view what is new especially if you sell few products. To sort products by newest all you need to do is use our product sorting extension.

How to List Products by Newest in Magento

To sort newest just follow these simple steps:

  1. Install Product Sorting on your Magento store
  2. Go to System -> Configuration -> Catalog and look under Frontend and change “Product Listing Sort by” to Newest if you want this to be the default sort option. Otherwise it will just appear in the sort drop down as an option for customers.
  3. There is no step #3. It is that easy!

What else can be done with Magento product sorting?

The product sorting extension that you installed has many more features in addition to sorting by newest. You can also sort by best sellers, most viewed, highest converting, and more. You can even automatically sort out of stock products last.

Product-Sorting-(Web)Quick Overview

Magento Product Sorting increases the effectiveness of your online product catalog and can increase your conversion rates. Sort products on your sales page by Best Sellers, Top Performers, Most Viewed, Number of Reviews, and more. Easily cascade your sorting options – such as always showing in stock items first.

Magento exception: Invalid block type

Extendware Team

What does the “Invalid block type” exception mean?

This exception usually means that your layout files are referencing a block that does not exist. This could be because an extension was disabled / deleted or because there is a typo in one of the layout files.

How do I solve this type of issue?

Look at the block name and search your layouts for any reference to this block. You can then either remove the layout reference or create the block it is referencing.

I recommend to always use high quality Magento extensions to avoid errors like this. If you need help resolving this error you can utilize our Magento development services.

Magento-Development-15-MinutesQuick Development Services Overview

We understand that sometimes there simply is not a pre-made extension that meets your specific needs. In these instances you need custom development. In addition, custom development can help squash bugs, debug 3rd party extensions, optimize your store, provide consultation, and more.

 

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.

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.