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Category Archives: Web Stuff

WordPress query_posts show the same page

December 7th, 2010Web Stuff1 comment

Sometimes I forget to amend any special queries I’ve setup within WordPress templates so that when I click on the “older posts” button I simply get the same page displayed again.

For special queries you should add the paging code below.

<?php
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
query_posts('category_name=staff&posts_per_page=10&paged=' . $paged); ?>

The server responded: 550 IP address nn.nn.nn.nn in XBL

October 22nd, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

For my sins my broadband is provided by AOL. This means that I don’t have a static IP address which suits me fine.

My email is provided by Heart Internet and sometimes I get the following error message in Outlook.

Essentially this means that my PCs current IP address is on a Blocked List of IPs held by Heart Internet. Strange that an AOL IP address would be affected in this way.

The solution. Switch off your modem / Switch it back on and hey presto, a new (and hopefully unblocked IP address).

Magento Secure Server using Heart Internet Shared Hosting

October 5th, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

I was getting 404 errors while using a shared SSL certificate on a Heart Internet shared hosting server.

What I did to resolve was change the Secure Base Link URL to:

{{secure_base_url}}index.php/

This does mean that SSL won’t work for admin!!

Maybe not the best solution but at least it’s working for payments and that’s the important thing!

Moving Magento from one server or domain to another

October 1st, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

I’ve gleaned this info from the Magento forums and from activecodeline.com which has now gone offline.

Thanks to Branko for his original post. (If you see this I hope it was ok to re-post but I could get in touch because your site went offline!). I was able to grab it from Google Cached.

I’m posting it here just for my own notes and to help anyone else struggling with moving Magento from on server to another.

Moving Magento from one domain or server to another

Export using default settings of phpMyAdmin.

Moving a database should be a simple two step process.

Step 1: Export your database to a file.

Step 2: Import your database from a file to new MySQL server.

Now doing it for Magento

First, make a backup of entire Magento database with all the default phpMyAdmin options.

Backup your database to .sql file.

Let’s suppose your development site is located at http://dev.site.com and your live site is located at http://livesite.com.

Second step for you would be to open the backup file you created at first step and do Search/ReplaceAll from “dev.site.com” to “livesite.com”.

Magento stores complete url paths inside the database. Therefore you’ll end up with database full of url paths. My backup file had total of 17300 occurrences of “dev.site.com”.

If you search/replaced your .sql file do not rush to import it.

If you try to import file as is, you’ll most likely get some errors from MySQL concerning foreign key constraint an so on.

Important steps

Place these lines of SQL code on very top of the .sql file:

SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT;
SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS;
SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION;
SET NAMES utf8;
SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;
SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO';
SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0;

Place these lines of SQL code on very end of the .sql file:

SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE;
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS;
SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS;
SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT;
SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS;
SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION;
SET SQL_NOTES=@OLD_SQL_NOTES;

Now you’re ready to import your .sql file to live MySQL database.

I suggest you ZIP your .sql file and then do import of .zip file trough phpMyAdmin.

Your upload will be faster.

For example my .sql file was 4MB in size while .zip was 300KB. During the import you should not get any error messages.

Ok, for now you should have copied entire root folder content of your Magento from dev.site.com to root folder of livesite.com. There is only one more thing to do before you can open you’re page in browser.

Having in mind that the root of your Magento is http://livesite.com you now need to open http://livesite.com/app/etc/local.xml file and modify it’s database connection information accordingly to your new database in livesite.com.

Save the changes open your browser to livesite.com.

Your Magento should be working!

Extra notes

This guide should get you up n running if you’re moving you’re site from one hosting to another.

There are few more things to keep in mind it the site is not working.

First you need to check folder write permissions through FTP.

Folders like /app, /app/etc, /var, /var/log, /var/session and so on, need to have appropriate access rights (755, 775, 777). Play around with it. There is one more thing that can cause problems. That is .htaccess file. If you’re moving a file from one site to another, and dumping it into same folder, then you probably won’t need to change this. But if you’re dumping it into some sub folder like http://livesite.com/store/ then you’ll have to write following into .htaccess file “RewriteBase /products/” and don’t forget your .sql Search/replace all to set it now replace of “http://dev.site.com” with “http://livesite.com//products/” since you’re dumping Magento into sub folder.

Magento E-Commerce : A Brilliant Open Source solution or a piece of frustrating unsupported crap?

September 30th, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

I’ve now built a few shops using Magento E-Commerce Community Edition.

Pros

it can look fabulous
it has features only expensive professional software has
it blows similar software like OSCommerce out of the water.

Cons (you’ll notice a rant below)

Let’s first give the Magento team their say. The website says;

“The Magento Community Edition is available as a free download under the open source OSL 3.0 license and is recommended for expert developers and highly technical enthusiasts and hobbyists in non-mission critical environments. As this edition is unsupported it is intended to be used by those happy to spend time and resource solving issues independently”

Fair enough. But I’m left with the feeling that a lot of their web traffic is driven by the “open source” moniker. BEWARE! The Open Source license is OSL 3.0 which means that the community doesn’t keep the source up to date, they can just amend what has been released.

In effect what this does is limit 3rd party Open Source type development because why spend good time developing a solution when in the next version of Magento it may not work.

There have been 4 main revisions in the code since then over a period of 3 years (we’re currently on version 1.4.1) but a quick search on their own forums reveal literally hundreds of frustrated web developers trying to find a simple solutions to the most basic of functions. When it comes to managing products and categories, Magento fails….. badly.

The unusual way that the management of categories is handled is simply not sensible. For 3 years this has been highlighted on the forums but still no real solution from the Magento team.

If it were a true Open Source product the community could now have coded a nice Javascript admin for product and category manipulation.

Advice

But why should they when the next time Magento is upgraded who’s to say it will work?

I think I’m going to leave Magento behind and leave you with just a little bit of advice.

Have a read of the Magento forums and see if you want to be in the same position as those poor guys (and me!).

Magento – Exception printing is disabled by default for security reasons

September 23rd, 2010Web Stuff2 comments

When testing your Magento site and you get this error you can enable the exception error printing by:

going to your Magento Root folder and look in /errors/
copy the sample local.xml.sample file and create a “local.xml” version

By default the error reporting is switched off for security reasons. When you’ve tested your system and are going live with your site you should ensure that it’s switched off again.

What happens when you view a website – for beginners

September 15th, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

I sometimes have to explain how internet pages actually make it to your PC.

Drawings make everyhting a little bit easier so here’s one I did earlier.

How a webpage gets to your PC

Your PC is connected at a Modem and/or Router. This connects you to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) via your telephone line.
Your pay your ISP for access to the Internet.
You can now connect to all the services other computers which are also linked to the Internet (like Google, Facebook, Twitter and those silly videos of cats dancing to Mambo Number 5)
To find your website each internet service and site has an address. The address is known as the Domain Name. Our domain name is http://www.solarpolar.co.uk. You have to pay for your domain name. Typically you pay for the name for a set number of years and you must remember to renew it when that time is up, or someone else can then take that domain name.
We’ve now accessed the service that hosts your actual website. Your PC can now talk directly to that machine and you’ll see your website on the screen. Easy huh? You have to pay someone to host your website for you.

Speeding up WordPress

September 12th, 2010Web Stuff0 comments

According to Google Labs Site Performance tool, the Solar Polar WordPress website took an average of 6-7 seconds to load during the month of June 2010. With Google now using page loading times as a ranking factor this was an issue that I had to address.

I started to investigate how to cut that page load time.

After a little internet searching I discovered that Google Chrome browser has a developer tool to help. A “Timeline” view which shows page load time.

I also found this great article by Julius Kuhn-Regnier. It highlights many steps that can be taken to speed up your WordPress installation.

My Approach

To firstly analyse my site I visited the home page using Chrome and once the page had loaded, right clicked and choose “Inspect Element”.

This opens up the Developer tools in the same browser window. You can “undock to a separate window” by clicking the button in the bottom left hand corner.

Undock the Developer Tools in Google Chrome

Choose the “Resources” tab and then underneath the “Graphs” columns choose “Time”. You’ll then see a neat graph of how long each element on your web page is taking to load.

What I changed

I could see immediately that my Superfish Javascript menus were taking up a fair bit of load time. They were originally included to add fade effects on my dropdown menus. Without them the site would look no different and I it is possible to include a fade effect with CSS3 so that was some time saved.

I then looked at my WordPress plugins. There were 2 differing version of jquery being called! Not great.

I actually got rid of one of the Social Links plugins. It seemed more hassle than it was worth. If I need the links I’ll just hard code them in a text widget.

I then used the advice in Julius Kuhn-Regnier‘s blog. JQuery is actually used within WordPress itself so in my own header just before the <?php wp_head() ?> section I included the call.

<?php wp_enqueue_script("jquery"); ?>

Now when I check the Time graph I see that only one version of jQuery is loaded. This is used in the WP-prettyPhoto lightbox plugin that I use.

I ensure that all images I use are as small as possible with the exception of my Flickr feed. I maintain a WordPress plugin called Flickr API which allows users to grab more than the standard 20 photos from a Flickr RSS feed.

more to follow as I document the list….

Installing Magento on Heart Internet Shared Server

May 27th, 2010Web Stuff2 comments

Installing Magento on Heart Internet Shared Servers

Caveat 1

These are my own notes for my install procedures. I’m posting them here as a reminder to myself. If they’re any use to you then all the better.

Caveat 2

I recently read that Heart Internet do not suggest that Magento is installed the shared server because it’s too CPU hungry. I’ll give it a go with this latest version but may have to shift to a dedicated server to ensure performance.

Installation

To install the files you can upload the zip file to the folder you require and using the Heart Internet Control Panel File Manager – right click the zip file to unzip it.

When I searched the Magento forums for information a chap called Jeremy had already written these notes below. I’ve amended them slightly for my purposes. Kudos to him for writing them down and sharing. I’m doing the same here so I never lose them!

Heart Internet are a shared hosting provider in the UK (heartinternet.co.uk). I’ve been using them now for around 3 years and can thoroughly recommend them.

These are the steps to a (hopefully!) successful install:

download the latest version of magento from http://www.magentocommerce.com/download . I used magento-0.8.16100.zip
follow the instructions in http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-installation-guide
- Check system requirements – Heart Internet have all the relevant versions and extensions installed so no problem there.
- Transfer the zip file to your site and unzip them using the Heart Internet Control Panel File Manager – right click the zip file to unzip it. If you want the site in your root domain then unzip the file into the public_html directory.
- Create a brand new mySQL database within the HI control panel. During the magento install wizard you’ll need the host (localhost), user id, password and db name (probably the same as the user id but can be checked by editing the db in control panel).
- Contact HI and ask them to allow “CREATE TEMP TABLE” permissions on your database. Heart stop this by default for security reasons
- Set the following permissions against the install files.

They are reproduced below:

In your FTP  program (I use Filezilla) you right click on the
remote file  and hit  properties, you can then change the
permissions of each file or directory (other ftp programs will be
similar).

Permission 777 for;
file
/public_html/magento/var/.htaccess,
directories
/public_html/magento/app/etc
/public_html/magento/var,
/public_html/magento/media
(and all folders under media)

Permission 755 for;
file
/public_html/magento/index.php 
folder
the magento directory (e.g. /public_html/magento/ or /public_html)

Edit the file /public_html/magento/.htaccess and add the following:

#############################
 ## For heart internet
 SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5
 php_flag short_open_tag on

Create a new text file within /public_html/magento/ called php5.ini
put the following in this file:

 php_flag short_open_tag on

If you want to install the demo store data then you should now load in the SQL statements in against the MySQL database – before the installation process

Double check everything then go to http://www.yoursite.com/magento/ and you should see the installation wizard. It’s pretty obvious from there on, just enter the db details and localisation etc.

Now I want to install the Modern Theme.

I go to the Admin menu. Choose Magento Connect. Change the settings to Beta. Then install the extension key magento-core/Interface_Frontend_Default_Modern (it’s free).

It should be that simple but I am noticing that this step frequently buggers up my install.

It seems to have installed and my update page displays all this:

magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules requires package  "magento-core/Lib_Google_Checkout" (version >= 1.4.0.0, version <=  1.4.1, excluded versions: 1.4.1)
magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules  requires package "magento-core/Lib_Js_Calendar" (version >= 1.51.0,  version <= 1.52, excluded versions: 1.52)
magento-core/Interface_Frontend_Default_Modern  requires package "magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules" (version >=  1.4.0.0, version <= 1.4.1, excluded versions: 1.4.1)
downloading  Lib_Varien-1.4.0.0.tgz ...
Starting to download  Lib_Varien-1.4.0.0.tgz (126,181 bytes)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . ...done: 126,181 bytes
downloading  Lib_Js_Mage-1.4.0.1.tgz ...
Starting to download  Lib_Js_Mage-1.4.0.1.tgz (87,791 bytes)
...done: 87,791 bytes
downloading  Lib_PEAR-1.4.0.0.tgz ...
Starting to download Lib_PEAR-1.4.0.0.tgz  (118,829 bytes)
...done: 118,829 bytes
downloading  Lib_ZF-1.9.6.0.tgz ...
Starting to download Lib_ZF-1.9.6.0.tgz  (1,763,063 bytes)
...done: 1,763,063 bytes
downloading  Lib_Js_Prototype-1.6.0.3.0.tgz ...
Starting to download  Lib_Js_Prototype-1.6.0.3.0.tgz (222,617 bytes)
...done: 222,617 bytes
downloading  Mage_Pear_Helpers-1.0.18800.tgz ...
Starting to download  Mage_Pear_Helpers-1.0.18800.tgz (9,225 bytes)
...done: 9,225 bytes
downloading  Lib_ZF_Locale-1.9.6.0.tgz ...
Starting to download  Lib_ZF_Locale-1.9.6.0.tgz (1,522,612 bytes)
...done: 1,522,612 bytes
downloading  PEAR-1.9.0.tgz ...
Starting to download PEAR-1.9.0.tgz (291,634  bytes)
...done: 291,634 bytes
downloading Archive_Tar-1.3.6.tgz  ...
Starting to download Archive_Tar-1.3.6.tgz (17,600 bytes)
...done:  17,600 bytes
downloading Structures_Graph-1.0.3.tgz ...
Starting  to download Structures_Graph-1.0.3.tgz (30,191 bytes)
...done: 30,191  bytes
downloading Console_Getopt-1.2.3.tgz ...
Starting to  download Console_Getopt-1.2.3.tgz (4,011 bytes)
...done: 4,011 bytes
downloading  XML_Util-1.2.1.tgz ...
Starting to download XML_Util-1.2.1.tgz  (17,729 bytes)
...done: 17,729 bytes
install ok:  channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_PEAR-1.4.0.0
install  ok: channel://pear.php.net/Archive_Tar-1.3.6
install ok:  channel://pear.php.net/Structures_Graph-1.0.3
install ok:  channel://pear.php.net/Console_Getopt-1.2.3
install ok:  channel://pear.php.net/XML_Util-1.2.1
install ok:  channel://pear.php.net/PEAR-1.9.0
install ok:  channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Mage_Pear_Helpers-1.0.18800
install  ok:  channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_Js_Prototype-1.6.0.3.0
install  ok: channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_ZF_Locale-1.9.6.0
install  ok: channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_Js_Mage-1.4.0.1
install  ok: channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_ZF-1.9.6.0
install  ok: channel://connect.magentocommerce.com/core/Lib_Varien-1.4.0.0
PEAR:  Optional feature webinstaller available (PEAR's web-based installer)
PEAR:  Optional feature gtkinstaller available (PEAR's PHP-GTK-based  installer)
PEAR: Optional feature gtk2installer available (PEAR's  PHP-GTK2-based installer)
PEAR: To install optional features use  "pear install pear/PEAR#featurename"

When you visit the front page again we still have the same Theme. We need to change the theme from the Admin Menu.

Choose System / Configuration / General / Design

Set the following:

Templates : default

Themes : modern

Now when you look at your store you’ll see the the new theme but probably still in the wrong format. This is because you’ll need to edit the Front Page makeup in the CMS section.

The Modern theme needs just the 1 column Home Page enabled. Go to the CMS menu, select the Pages option, then the Home Page 2 Column with right bar and choose the disable option and save it. Then choose the Home Page 1 Column option and “Enable” then save it.

The Modern Theme should now be fully active.

Note : Because I tried to enter the demo data after the shop was configured I got an error – but the error was surpressed with the message Exception printing is disabled by default for security reasons.

To reset that I changed the file errors/local.xml.sample to local.xml.

Installing Magento on Windows 7 XAMPP

March 15th, 2010Web Stuff3 comments

Installing Magento

These notes are currently being updated.

I’ve installed Magento before and remember having problems so I’m gonna document my efforts here so that I don’t forget next time.

First I’ll document installing Magento on my Windows 7 / XAMPP environment. Once that’s done I’ll show you what I’ve done on my reseller shared server account at Heart Internet UK.

Installing Magento on my Windows 7 / XAMPP

Magento 1.4.0.1 wont run under PHP 5.3. That rules out the latest version of XAMPP. If you want to use Magento you may have to downgrade XAMPP to version 1.7.1.

To download Magento you’ll have to register with their site. Do so and download the Magento Full release and also the latest sample data. I’m using magento-1.4.0.1.zip which was the latest at my time of install.

I’ve created a new local test folder called c:websitestestshop .

I need to setup a virtual host in apache. Here is the first important bit. The mix of Magento and some browser (Firefox / IE / Safari) on a local install has problems assigning cookies. The solution is to ensure that the virtual host name has a dot in the name.

With this in mind I’ve setup a virtual host called www.testshop.com which points to the c:websitestestshop folder.

Below is the apache vhost entry:

<VirtualHost *>
 DocumentRoot "C:/web/sites/testshop"
 ServerName testshop.com:80
 <Directory "C:/web/sites/testshop">
 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
 AllowOverride All
 Order deny,allow
 Deny from all
 Allow from 127.0.0.1
 DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm
 </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

In my c:windowssystem32driversetchosts file I have the entry.

127.0.0.1       testshop.com

I unzip the magento install zip file in a temp folder. This gives me a “magento” folder.

I also unzip the sample data zip file. This gives me a “magento-sample-data-1.2.0″ folder.

I then put the sample data “media” folder into my “magento” folder.

Now I’m going to create a database. I use PHPMyAdmin to create an empty database called testshop.

Once created I then need to load the sample data into it.

Select the testshop database / Choose the SQL option / COpy and Paste the text from the sample data magento_sample_data_for_1.2.0.sql file / Press the Go button. This should load up all the demo data.

Now I move the magento folder into my c:websitestestshop folder so that now I have my installation in c:websitestestshopmagento.

Once all that is done we start the install:

I point my Firefox browser at http://testshop.com/magento and I get the initial screen.

Figure 1

I click the agree tick box and hit the Continue button which then brings up the Localization page.

Figure 2

I enter English UK / GMT / British Pound Sterling – then Continue which takes us to the

Configuration Page

Figure 3

I enter the root and user password for my database and also choose to save the session data in the db.

I press continue and wait for the computer to whir away. The process takes about 2 mins on my machine before reporting back with the Create Admin Account page.

Figure 4

I fill in the details then hit continue again and get the “You’re all Set!” page.

Figure 5

I’m all set! With an encryption key which I keep in a safe place.

I now have the option to have a look at the Front End or the Back End. I’ll choose the back end so click “Go to Backend”.

I now get the login panel.

Figure 6

I insert my username and password and…

Figure 7

The Dashboard appears with some messages I’ve got to read. Strangley it tells me that Magento CE Version 1.4.0.1 Stable is now available. Isn’t that what I’ve just loaded?? I thin it is. I close this message and goto the message inbox (System / Notifications) – View 50 – Select All – Actions – Mark as Read – Submit.

The I click Dashboard in the menu.

Figure 8

Apart from the “One or more of the Indexes are not up to date” message all seems to be well.

Now I’ll check the Front End.

I enter http://testshop.com/magento into my browser and get the screen :

Figure 9

The local install seems to be working. Yay!

Installing Magento on Heart Internet Shared Servers

Caveat Number 1. I recently read that Heart Internet do not suggest that magento is installed the shared server because it’s too CPU hungry. I’ll give it a go with this latest version but may have to shift to a dedicated server to ensure performance.

To install the files you can upload the zip file to the folder you require and using the Heart Internet Control Panel File Manager – right click the zip file to unzip it.

When I searched the Magento site for info. Jeremy has done these notes below which I’ve amended slightly for my purposes. Kudos to him for writing it down. I’m doing the same here so I never lose them.

Heart Internet are a shared hosting provider in the uk (heartinternet.co.uk). These are the steps to a (hopefully!) successful install:

1) download the latest version of magento from http://www.magentocommerce.com/download . I used magento-0.8.16100.zip
2) follow the instructions in http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-installation-guide

They are reproduced below:
a) check system requirements – Heart Internet have all the relevant versions and extensions installed so no problem there.
b) transfer the zip file to your site and unzip them usingthe Heart Internet Control Panel File Manager – right click the zip file to unzip it. If you want the site in your root domain then unzip the file into the public_html directory.
c) Create a brand new mySQL database within the HI control panel. During the magento install wizard you’ll need the host (localhost), user id, password and db name (probably the same as the user id but can be checked by editing the db in control panel).

d) Contact HI and ask them to allow “CREATE TEMP TABLE” permissions on your database. Heart stop this by default for security reasons

e) Set the permissions against the install files. In your FTP program (I use Filezilla) you right click on the remote file and hit properties, you can then change the permissions of each file or directory (other ftp programs will be similar).

Set file /public_html/magento/var/.htaccess,

the directories /public_html/magento/app/etc, /public_html/magento/var,

and all the directories under /public_html/magento/media to 777.

3) Now we also need to set some further permissions.

Ensure that /public_html/magento/index.php and the magento directory itself are both set to 755.

4) Edit the file /public_html/magento/.htaccess and add the following:

#############################
 ## For heart internet
 SetEnv DEFAULT_PHP_VERSION 5
 php_flag short_open_tag on

5) Create a new text file within /public_html/magento/ called php5.ini
put the following in this file:

 php_flag short_open_tag on

6) If you want to install the demo store data then you should now load in the SQL statements in against the MySQL database – before the installation process