Magento 1.4.x

If you navigate to System -> Magento Connect -> Maganeto Connect Manager and find no packages listed similar to that shown in the following screenshot, it means that you've not initialised PEAR yet.  This can happen if you used the full distribution bundle to install Magento.  If you used the 'Downloader' option then PEAR will have been initialised and used to download and install the necessary packages. To resolve the issue all you have to do is initialise PEAR by running the following commands via SSH on your web server: [code] <pre>./pear mage-setup ./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest [/code] If...

---

I've always found quick reference guides or cheat sheets extremely useful, so I thought I'd put a few together for Magento.  The first in this series of 'Quick Ref Guides/Cheat Sheets' is the backoffice Admin Menu system. Let me know if you find these useful.  Next on the agenda will be a quick ref guide that looks at the configuration settings for Magento.

---

Google Analytics is one of the most popular analytics engines for understanding what's happening on a website.  Magento Commerce includes Google Analytics code, so all you have to do is enable the functionality and enter your Google Analytics account ID. Where to find your tracking code within Google Analytics To access your tracking code from within your Google Analytics account: Log in to Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics From the Overview page, select the account that has the profile for the tracking code you're looking for, as the code is profile-specific. Select...

---

Whenever Magento 1.4.0.1 encounters an error condition you're likely to see the message [code] There has been an error processing your request Exception printing is disabled by default for security reasons Error log record number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX [/code] Unlike previous versions of Magento where it used to dump out the error report for the world to see, 1.4.0.1 now keeps the data private and accessible only for the administrators and instead we get "Exception printing is disabled by default for security reasons".  This is because there's information in the error reports which hackers...

---

One of the new features in Magento Commerce CE 1.4 is "Index Management".  We had basic functionality for creating catalog and navigation indexes in 1.3, but 1.4 takes it to a whole new level and really improves the time taken to do database lookups. After installing or upgrading to 1.4 you'll notice the following message along the top of your Admin backend: One or more Indexes are not up to date: Product Attributes, Product Prices, ... .Click here to go to Index Management and rebuild required indexes. Clicking the link should take you directly to the "Index Manager" where you can build...

---

If you've upgraded your Magento Commerce site to 1.4.x you may have run in to the problem where any attempt to send a response via your 'Contact Us' page fails with "Unable to submit your request.  Please try again later". If you look at the code /app/code/core/Mage/Contacts/controllers/IndexController.php [code lang="php"] public function postAction() { $post = $this->getRequest()->getPost(); if ( $post ) { $translate = Mage::getSingleton('core/translate'); /* @var $translate Mage_Core_Model_Translate */ $translate->setTranslateInline(false); ...

---

This screencast continues the "Installing Magento" series and builds on my previous post/screencasts, 4 ways to create a MySQL Database and User for Magento.  Installing Magento Commerce is fairly straight forward.  I've created a step-by-step video tutorial that should guide you through the process.  The video tutorial is detailed so I had to split it over 3 parts.  I've also documented the procedure below. Installing Magento 1.4 using the full release package - Part 1 Installing Magento 1.4 using the full release package - Part 2 Installing Magento 1.4 using the full release package...

---

Following on from the previous screencast where I showed you how to verify your web server requirements for Magento, this screencast focuses on the next step which is to create a MySQL Database and Database User which can be used for your Magento installation. Think Security! Before we can install Magento we must first create a database, a database user, and assign that user to the Magento database.  For security purposes, the user we create must have access to this and only this database.  If you have a single database user that has access to your forums and blog, for example, if that...

---

The highly anticipated version 1.4 of Magento Commerce Community Edition was made available on Feb 12th.  Varien either dropped a few non-critical bugs or they worked double shifts to get this release to be stable enough for production.  When we looked at the roadmap in TWiM Week 05 it showed 895 of 1097 issue(s) resolved. Progress (81%).  Here we are at the end of week 6 and we've got ourselves a stable release.  According to the Release Notes I count only 451 bugs listed.  Regardless it's great to see 1.4 make it to general availablility so contratulations Varien.  Major Improvements since...

---