PHP7 is here and our developers noticed some impressive speed improvements right off the bat. It’s important to keep your Magento server up-to-date for security and performance, but we recommend upgrading to PHP7 for noticeable Magento performance improvements. After some benchmark testing, we noticed a 70% decrease in page load time and 30% less memory consumption across the board on a base installation of Magento 1.9.
Our Lead Developer wrote some simple directions on upgrading to PHP7 from PHP5 on Ubuntu. These should be performed by a developer or system admin – Contact us for help on upgrading to PHP7 on any Magento install.
There’s only a couple of minor quirks, like not having dl() support which killed a couple of the extensions that had copy-protection on one site. There are a couple of minor things to do to make PHP7 work but it’s covered below.
If you’re ready to take the Magento/PHP7 plunge and are using Ubuntu, then this is how you can do it:
Remove PHP5 (Warning: This will remove PHP5 from your system completely.)
Here are some common problems with Magento after installing PHP7 –
If Apache is dumping plain text php instead of rendering it, then be sure that you’ve installed libapache2-mod-php7.0.
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php7.0
sudo service php7.0-fpm restart
sudo service apache2 restart
Getting a white page or error about mcrypt in Magento?
sudo apt-get install php7.0-mcrypt
sudo service php7.0-fpm restart
sudo service apache2 restart
Still not feeling confident? If you aren’t ready for upgrading to PHP7 on your own, give the experts at InteractOne a call today at (513) 469-7042 or fill out our contact form.
We recently teamed up with hosting specialist, byte, to be a part of their Magento support system for MageReport.com. MageReport was created to protect the performance and security of Magento shops. By sharing their tools with the rest of the Magento community, byte hopes to increase the overall security of Magento worldwide.
We are certainly happy byte chose to share their useful tool. After using MageReport for scanning Magento sites, we were extremely impressed with the level of detail and accuracy it provides. MageReport is a definite asset to Magento merchants and the Magento Community.
How MageReport works
MageReport is a free service that checks the security status of Magento stores with lightening quick results. The report not only shows insight on the security status of scanned shops, but also on how to fix possible vulnerabilities. While it is not possible to see existing Magento files from the outside, MageReport uses behavior-based identification patterns. All possible because each Magento patch introduces subtle changes in behavior. In addition, it’s possible to request a few static files and derive the Magento version from that.
MageReport.com checks Magento shops for the following known security vulnerabilities:
Credit Card Hijack
Ransomware
Cache leak vulnerability
Guru Inc Javascript Hack
Outdated Magento version
Unprotected development files
Default /admin location
Unprotected Magmi
Unprotected version control
Outdated server software
Security patch 5994 (admin disclosure)
Security patch 5344 (Shoplift)
Security patch 6285 (XSS, RSS)
Security patch 6482 (XSS)
Security patch 6788 (secrets leak)
Security patch 7405 (admin takeover)
SSL Certificate check
Head over to MageReport.com to read more about the Magento tool and to scan your site for security patches.
By Amanda Watkins, Marketing Communications Manager at InteractOne
Top eCommerce platforms, which is best for you?
We chose to compare and contrast the top eCommerce platforms by market share for the top 10k sites based on data from BuiltWith.
Starting an eCommerce business can be exciting and rewarding. One of the first important steps is deciding on the type of platform to use. When it comes to building, managing and running your website, you want to choose the right platform that will propel you to success, not a failure – especially if financial resources are limited.
As a long time senior Magento partner, we have worked on a lot of websites for many different levels of companies. While Magento is our platform of choice, we understand that it isn’t for everyone and every business. Whether you are just starting out or are ready to take your business to the next level it’s important to understand what you are getting into.
According to BuiltWith, Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify are top platforms by market share for the top 10k eCommerce sites.
All three platforms are chosen by top companies, but which is the top eCommerce platform for you?
Magento
Magento Community and Magento Enterprise editions are dominating the eCommerce platform community with a combined total of 20%. Free to download for the community edition, open source, powerful and scalable, it’s no surprise that Magento is the most used eCommerce platform worldwide.
Magento Pros:
Feature-rich, out-of-the-box with flexible options for nearly all languages and currencies
Thousands of extensions are available thanks to the flexible API architecture
Manage multiple stores from one admin
Supportive Community with a slew of developers and partners ready to build and solve problems
In-depth training available to help you get started
Two editions are available, community for small businesses and enterprise for larger merchants
Magento Cons:
Magento can be very complicated for a non-tech savvy merchant
Development can get expensive, especially for custom work and qualified help
Self-hosted, meaning it requires a Magento hosting provider
WooCommerce
Gaining a lot of attention with 8% of the eCommerce platform community, WooCommerce is quickly becoming one of the most used eCommerce platforms. Different from Magento and Shopify, WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress and easily integrates into any WordPress site. Free to install, user-friendly, familiar and open source it’s no surprise WooCommerce is gaining popularity.
WooCommerce Pros:
Easily integrates with WordPress
Easily customizable with plugins
Developmental resources widely available via WordPress developers
Built-in blogging for easy Marketing and SEO
User-friendly interface
WooCommerce Cons:
Lacks scalability
Basic features require plugins that are becoming more costly as the platform gains popularity
While aspects of WordPress are simple, plugin additions can get complicated
Self-hosted, meaning it requires a hosting provider
Shopify
With also 8% of the eCommerce market share comes Shopify. Shopify is notably different from Magento and WooCommerce in that it is a SAAS (software as a service) platform – not open source or downloadable (the code is proprietary). Designed for ease of use, Shopify is a one-stop-shop supplying hosting, set-up and customer support, making it an easy choice for busy or less tech-savvy merchants.
Shopify Pros:
Easy to use and set up
Hosting provided
Technical support provided
Comes installed with many basic payment options
Shopify Cons:
A commercial product requiring monthly fees
Inventory restrictions dependent on your payment plan or level
A limited number of available free themes
Lack of flexibility – Limited number of available add-ons
Which is best?
All three are top eCommerce platforms and have their pros and cons. The key is choosing which one you can live with, or more importantly, can afford. Magento is a market leader for a reason. It’s scalable, customizable and ready for global eCommerce. Although potentially pricey for smaller companies expecting a customized shop, Magento is a great investment for businesses whose growth is dependent on a flexible and powerful platform. WooCommerce’s easy integration into WordPress is worth noting. Bloggers turning merchants with basic tech savvy could likely profit from WooCommerce. However, WooCommerce merchants are discovering increasing prices with the increasing popularity of the platform. Finally, Shopify provides real benefits for smaller companies with all-inclusive pricing for hosting, support and set up and is a great choice for the busy or less tech-savvy merchant. Nevertheless, successful merchants could quickly outgrow the platform and need to migrate to a more scalable platform.
It is possible to track across multiple domains with analytics, for instance let’s say you have your main site (mainsite.com) and your shopping cart, reservation widget or countless other scenarios (othersite.com).
You can feasibly track everything that goes on within these two domains under one profile so that you can get all the attribution tied into one place.
To get started you will need to have the ability to access both sites or have someone that has access that can install code for you.
First thing first, sign into your Google Analytics account go to the admin tab then the tracking info tab under that, you should see something similar to this:
You will want to select multiple top-level domains from the radio buttons and then copy the code and put it your text editor. This is where you tweak it to fit your multiple domain website.
You’ll notice is there’s a couple of new items in the code:
_setDomainName
_setAllowLinker
Now add to the code, here’s the first trick to remember the domain you set refers to what site it’s actually going on. For instance the code that goes on your mainsite.com is set to “mainsite.com” and when you put the code on the other site you change that to reflect the root so it will be “othersite.com”
Here’s what that looks like: var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'mainsite.com']);
_gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview', '/dynamic funnel tracking']);
There’s a few more steps, however before we get to those let’s talk for a minute about tracking dynamic pages like some shopping carts or lead generation funnels.
In the case of dynamically produced pages you would put something after the back slash to ID that page.
You can build an actual URL like /step_one.html or you can build it to simply be something like this /step1.
It makes no difference whatsoever just name it what you want and write it down so you can build a goal funnel with this later on.
Now for the second component of this set up you will need to link back and forth from the sites, that could be with an add to cart button a link or even a form.
When using a form you need use this piece of code inserted into the form:
When you’re linking to the othersite.com you need to use a different piece of code and looks like this:
<a href=”http://othersite.com/intro.html” onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_link’, ‘http://othersite.com’]); return false;”>Add To Cart</a>
Realize that if you’re on the othersite.com linking back to your mainsite.com you need to use something similar to the one above, however it has to have the right link in it and it will look like this:
Now that we’ve gotten through all the tags and what goes where we need to build another profile that will track all of your domains together, this way you will always have baseline historical data for your domains that you can refer to when setting up filters in your new profile.
Here are the steps to accomplish this:
From the account home page of your analytics account select the account under which you want to add the profile.
Click the Admin tab in the upper right hand corner of the page below the “my account’ settings.
Then click on the desired profile
Click on the tab that says filters and new filter and then set up your filter to look like the image below.
There you have it check back later for your data if you run into issues feel free to post your questions below.
A big frustration many organizations have is managing content for their websites. Often Word Docs are passed along a chain of 3 to 4 people before the content actually gets posted to the website and by the time the content goes live it may already need to be revised.
“Why can’t we just update our site whenever we want” seems to be the million dollar question. We’ll I’m happy to announce that there is a solution for this question. Enter the age of Content Management Systems (CMS).
CMS come in many different sizes, shapes and colors but in the end they all serve to help organizations directly edit the content on their websites without having to get a tech person (IT) involved.
No matter which CMS solution you choose you will need the help of a competent web design firm to install/configure the software and train your staff on how to use it. Once the software is installed and running your organization can benefit from the increased speed and efficiency of managing it’s website content without calling IT.
