Magento Security Patches. Why should you install them?

When Magento releases new security patches, we often get questions from clients like why they should invest money into having those patches applied to their Magento installation. In this blog post we’ll describe the importance of the patches and emphasize their role in having your Magento website functioning properly.

Adding an image chooser to a Magento 2 widget

Magento 2 has a handy toolkit for static content management on the site that is called Content Management System (CMS). The toolkit consists of three main parts: pages, blocks and widgets. Pages allow us to manage content of an entire page. Blocks provide an ability to edit content of separate page elements. The main difference between blocks and widgets: if you need to change block parameters, you usually have to do it programmatically. Widgets are similar to static blocks, they allow to insert various content into static pages or static blocks. As a rule, widgets have configurable parameters that can be set up when adding it via admin panel.

Working with custom configuration files in Magento 2

As you may know, initially Magento keeps all configuration values in XML files. XML structure allows dividing all configuration values into separate sections, subsections, etc. In that way, every configuration value has its own path in the configuration three (called XPath). We usually work with Magento built-in configuration files, however, there are some situations when we need to have our own configuration file alongside with the standard files.

Configure Code Sniffer for PHPStorm and Magento 2

For a good and maintainable application, high-quality product code is essential. The code quality usually depends on the developer’s professionalism. But among the thousands of lines of code, something might be missed. Fortunately, there are several small yet useful utilities that can automate some routines and help you check the code using different rules for different coding standards. In PHP development, there are two popular utilities for code validation: Code Sniffer and Mess Detector.

Refresh order grid table in Magento 1

Recently, we’ve faced a data inconsistency in the Magento sales_flat_order_grid db table. Some of the values in custom columns look like they were shifted. This issue may occur if the order grid has multiple custom fields and when a user archives orders in the Enterprise Edition.

Magento 2 request flow overview

It’s interesting to know how Magento 2 works “under the hood” not only for developers but for all the people, who work with the platform. Not everyone has a possibility to dig in the code deeply enough in order to check the details. In this post we will put Magento 2 request flow in layman’s terms.

Error page customization in Magento 2

So, if you encounter a Magento 2 internal server error, it won’t appear as a white page with black textHave you ever seen a page with “There has been an error processing your request” when using Magento 1 or Magento 2? If no, you are lucky. This page is usually displayed when an issue appears in a system execution flow. Magento processes such issues by creating a separate report file in the var/report directory and by showing the error page with the details. You can also see a similar page “Service Temporarily Unavailable” when the maintenance mode has been enabled. Did you know that you can easily customize these error pages?

7 Essential Steps for Creating Your eCommerce Business

Last year turned out to be very successful for the eCommerce industry. Both the revenue figures and the growing number of shopping apps confirm that the global eCommerce market is continuing to develop at a rapid pace. Future forecasts are even more positive. In 2016, for instance, global B2C eCommerce sales are expected to reach $1.92 trillion. By 2018, that figure may even be as large as $2.36 trillion.

These days, more businesses than ever are getting into eCommerce. While there are plenty of recommendations for how a new eCommerce business should start their venture, the following are seven essential rules you should keep in mind as you begin setting up your online store.

Magento 2 Product list aggregate rating fix

During our work with the Magento 2 Rich Snippets module, we noticed numerous errors on the product list page when switched to list mode. The errors were generated by the standard Magento 2 Luma theme, when attempting to aggregate rating markup rendering for each product in the product list. This article outlines a configurable solution to address this issue. We will have an opportunity to disable this fix for any custom theme which doesn’t have this error or in case the next Magento 2 version has a fix for this included.