Posted by Richard on Jan 23, 2010 in
Experience If you’ve ever moved websites between hosts or wanted to set up a development version of a client site then you’ll have copied files from one and made them available to the other. The basic method for doing this is to ftp into the source server, download the files to your computer, ftp to the new server and upload the files there. The problem with this is that it takes ages to do when you’ve got large websites.
Despite having been doing web development for a number of years I’ve never thought about this before as I would always follow this process. However, given that I run a number of Magento sites for clients now and that there are a lot of pressure on my time I need a quick way to do this. So, after about 20 minutes research I realised there is a really easy way.
First on the source system compress the file into a .zip or .tar.gz file. Most hosts provide tools to do this. I know CPanel and DirectAdmin do. Next, download this. As long as you’ve a fast broadband connection this won’t take long. Next upload to the new host server. This took about 45 minutes for me. However, I set it up and just left it running. Last, after checking I have shell access with my user on the new host server, I use Putty to do a SSH session and then just run the following command: tar -zxvf yourfile.tar.gz. This unzips everything into the folder you leave the file.
All done in under an hour with about 10 minutes of my actual time.
Tags: file transfer, Magento, servers, Software
Posted by Richard on Oct 20, 2009 in
Technology Magento is a great piece of kit and is taking the e-commerce world by storm. However, unless you have a good understanding of object-oriented programming and are familiar with extended classes you’re going to struggle a little. At the moment I’m redesigning a client’s site to incorporate an intial splitter page as the home page that then allows them to pass through to the catalogue proper or to the blog.
However, the way I chose to do this was to copy the html source from the home page and redo the html and css manually. However, I’m sure there must be better ways of doing this, such as using includes on particular features. The problem is that the only method I could think of was using an iframe, something I didn’t want to do for reasons that go without saying
As it stands the only drawback is that changes to the Magento catalogue navigation will mean the need to update the static html in the new home page. This is a bit of a bind but isn’t too problematic as the links are permanent. It’s only really when a new section is added that the page will need to be added.
It’s a relatively simple solution without needing to get into Magento code. I’m sure it could be done in a sweeter way but this seems to be the least complicated way and one that fits with the client’s budget.
Tags: Magento, method, website, Wordpress
Posted by Richard on Oct 18, 2009 in
Technology In community version 1.4 of Magento a new option to add user-designe widgets will be available. This represents a big step forward for Magento, the shopping cart software to use. For more information see http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/introducing-magento-widgets/. Getting dynamic data onto your pages will be a fairly simple process soon.
(Taken from the Magento blog)
- Dynamic product data in Marketing Campaign Landing Pages
- Dynamic Information such as Recently Viewed Items into Content Pages
- Promotional images to position in different blocks, side columns and other locations throughout the storefront
- Interactive elements and action blocks (external review systems, video chats, voting and subscription forms)
- Alternative navigation elements (tag clouds, catalog image sliders)
- Create interactive and dynamic flash elements easily configured and embedded within content pages for enhanced user experience
A good reason to upgrade from the 1.2 and 1.3 versions, though I’d advise giving 1.4 a few months to bed in.
Tags: Magento, Software, widget