Offshore Web Development Company Blog

We all love Magento. It is an intelligent, robust e-commerce platform the world has been waiting for. However it’s a human tendency that we are never satisfied with what we have and look further for Magento customization. The new Hype over Magento customization has been enthusiastically received, with both brands and customers commenting on the excellent presentation and ease of use. Popular modules that people opt for Customizing are its layered navigation, RMA module, Stock management, checkout procedure, Supply chain management, Blog integration etc...

It is important to keep in mind while opting for Magento Ecommerce Customization that the Magento store developer should design and develop the Magento Custom Design keeping in minds both the brands and customers. Things to keep in mind while opting for Magento Customization services:

There is no doubt that with further enhancements through Custom Magento Design is a Powerful and multi-faceted approach to create increased user participation on your webstore. Plug into Magento Customization India, and discover an entirely new set of options available from Magento custom design to magento ecommerce customization. So Happy Magento E-commerce Customization!

Labels: Customization, designer, Magento

For an aspiring Magento developer or a struggling magneto developer this article is dedicated to the sleepless nights you have spent on working on Magento ecommerce development.

• Always follow The official Twitter account from Magento Commerce by Varien from Los Angeles, California.
  
  
• How to extend an existing class to add new functionality to satisfy a specific requirement in Magento:
  
  Ans: There are 4 basic steps in the process:
  
  • Create a PHP file for the extended class in the /local code repository
  • Create an XML file to let Magento know about this extended class
  • Create a PHP template to utilize the output of the extended class
  • Modify the XML layout files to bring in the new template
    
    
• For a magento developer that wants to display subcategories in the main body of a category page rather than them being restricted solely to the navigation bar.
  
  

Ans:        * 1. Upload this page to your installation at:

               *              /app/design/frontend/[INTERFACE]/[THEME]/template/catalog/navigation/custom-category.phtml

               *

               * 2. Enter the following code in a static block:

               *                             {{block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.navigation" template="catalog/navigation/custom-category.phtml"}}

               *

               * 3. Select the static block as the content source for the categories you require

               *

               * 4. Create new CSS styles as required

               *

               **/

?>

<?php $_categories=$this->getCurrentChildCategories() ?>

<?php if($_categories->count()): ?>

<ul class="category-links">       

               <?php foreach ($_categories as $_category): ?>

        <?php if($_category->getIsActive()): ?>

        <li class="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_category->getUrlKey()) ?>">

           <a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>">

              <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_category->getName()) ?>

           </a>

        </li>

        <?php endif; ?>

    <?php endforeach ?>

</ul>

<? endif; ?>

• A custom module that will allow user to browse products by attribute options and categories.

Ans: app/code/local/MageDev/Filter - location of filter module files

app/code/local/MageDev/Filter/etc - config data

app/code/local/MageDev/Filter/controllers - custom controllers

app/code/local/Block - here goes blocks logic

app/code/local/Helper - general functionality

• For setting redirection anywhere in Magento code.

 Ans: Mage::app()->getResponse()->setRedirect(Mage::getUrl('customer/account/login'));

• 
  

  For Writing custom write custom query

Ans: 

01 <?php

02 // For Read

03

04 // fetch read database connection that is used in Mage_Core module

05 $read= Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getConnection('core_read');

06 $value=$read->query("SE...");

07 $row = $value->fetch();

08

09 print_r($row); // As Array

10

11 // For Write

12

13 // fetch write database connection that is used in Mage_Core module

14 $write = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource')->getConnection('core_write');

15

16 // now $write is an instance of Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract

17 $write->query("insert into tablename values ('aaa','bbb','ccc')");

18

19 ?>

 I strongly suggest all the Magento developers that you keep this article a hush hush!

Labels: developer, Development, Magento

How can you get an expert and a professional Magento designer to design your Website?

1. A professional Magento designer will have examples of their work available- It is necessary that the majority of the sample magento website design work appeals to you.
2. A good Magento designer will ask a lot of questions you must prepare a Project requirement document for him for a better perspective.
   
   
3. Do the Magento design expert have a structured planning process that leads you through the design phase, and ask them if they will document all the discussions and decisions, as that would be really helpful.
   
   
4. Experience of the Magento designer Matters, with experience the designer will know that the Ecommerce Design success lies in
   
   1. Strengthening your Brand with design continuity
   2. building your customers trust and confidence and lastly
   3. Increase repeat business through attractive visual appeal
5. It is necessary to check that the portfolio of the Magento designer has websites that can be navigated easily
   
   
6. The design of payment pages should be less cluttered so as to avoid cart abandonment.
   
   
7. Last but the most important rely on your gut feeling. If you like him and he has the technical skillset - hire him and discuss the design with him in detail.
   
   
8. A Magento designer in US UK or in Europe would cost much higher than the Magento Designer in India. If price is a constraint opt for a good magento designer from India for professional magento design service.

For the designers - build a conversion improving Magento designs and for the Website owner hope you get a designer who read this article!

Labels: designer, Magento, website design

If you are reading this article you are either a website owner or a web designer training yourself to be an expert magento designer. There are two perspective mentioned in this article in regards to magento design

1. Tips for Magento designer
2. Tips for Website Owner’s on how to searching for a professional magento website designer.

For Web designers aspiring to be Expert Magento designers

There are a lot of Magento designers out there how can you outshine them?

Magento Design and Magento theming tips:

• Read the Design Guide. Each chapter acts as a prelude to the next, so it necessary not to skip pages in between and follow along with the documentation in the order it is written.
• Look at the recently launched Screen casts Inorder to get a more graphic visual of the Design guide.
• To figure out which template file to edit: turn on “Template Path Hints” through System > Configuration > Advanced > Developer > Debug > Template Path Hints = ON.

This option is only visible if you change the “Current Configuration Scope” dropdown to a website (like “Main Website”) rather than “Default Config”.

• To switch to a theme (such as “Modern”), after downloading it in Magento Connect Manager, go to System > Design and then click “Add Design Change”.
• There are nine cascading style sheets, 25 XML files, and more than 40 PHTML templates. Inorder to find the tool, you'll need to log in to the Magento administration panel.
  
  • Then navigate to System > Configuration. Look at drop-down menu at the top of the left navigation on the configurations page.
  • It should read "Current Configuration Scope." Incase of one or more one store operating from the Magento back-end, you'll need to select the store from the drop-down menu.
  • The nest step would be at the bottom of left-hand navigation, select "Developer." Now Under the "Debug" section of the developer s page you should see an option for "Template Path Hints."
  • Change this option to "Yes" next save by clicking the "Save Config" button in the upper-right hand side of the page. On reloading the home page of your Magento store you will get several red tags and boxes these tags show which PHTML template is being used for each section of the page.
  • Now that you’ve located the template and XML files that underlie the page, we can make many changes or even copy code from one page and apply it to another.
• Don’t desert your 404 page spice it up with some surprise , use a category listing page or a tag line to distract customer from 404 page , use

Labels: designer, Magento

There has been a considerable rise in need for Magento Development over the span of 2 years especially after Magento being declared as the King of Ecommerce Shopping Cart .Magento development companies and freelance Magento developers all over the World are specially hiring and training their best of developers to get more Skilled and Proficient in Magento development. It is now officially announced by Varian that there are over 30,000 Magento development companies offering various Magento development services that helps in bring in more than 30 billion transactions.Looking at the Google trends there is a constant hike in users surfing the net for Magento Development Service related information and companies that offers Magento development.

Let’s talk about India, which is still a popular destination for USA, Europe, Canada and UK to outsource and seek offshore developers, there are more than 45,000 companies that offer Magento Shopping Cart Development. Considering the various options available for choosing a Magento development company in India for your magento Ecommerce development you can easily buy a premium edition of Magento available and cover the extra cost by hiring an Expert Magento developer from India at less than half of what a Magento developer from USA or UK would demand. Hiring a professional Magento developer India has become a very popular form of business Model for many Magento development companies worldwide.

In 6-7 months time it is estimated that to find a professional magento development company or a freelance Magento developer in your neighborhood would be as easy as dialing for a cab. With over 1.5 million Downloads and over 1,700 Extensions available in the market Magento development has become a major source for companies to earn revenue and showcase their work to their ever increasing magento clientele. However, contacting Magento development company is easy but to choose an Expert Magento developer is tough and a tricky matter. Since Magento keeps on updating itself, developers need to be updated and have strong coding skills to match the continuous upgradations.

Keeping this in mind many Magento development companies have created Magento development labs in their office premise giving continuous training session for over 1,700 extensions that are available in the market. To keep abreast with competition companies have not only made their Zend developers more skilled but also developed custom magento modules to attract clients with special Magento Shopping Cart Development needs. On the other hand there are various Magento developers that work freelance and are committed to nurture the growth of the Magento community, building strong and lasting partnerships and continue in developing and improving on Magento.

To add more the new Magento Solution Partner program was announced in April targeting larger, established ecommerce specialized companies, capable of expanding awareness and adoption of Magento around the globe. More than 40 partners of Varian offering Magneto Development services were responsible for delivering 100+ Magento Enterprise Edition based projects in the first few months since launching the Enterprise Edition subscription in April.

A rise in number of companies offering Magento development services over the world is a contributing factor to Magneto’s popularity and reciprocatory to the rise in Magento development demand arising in the global market.

Labels: developer, Development, Ecommerce, Magento, php shopping cart, services

Magento Shopping Cart is the fastest growing ecommerce solution in the market with rich-features. It is an optimum enterprise shopping cart solution for any online business. Magento Ecommerce offers merchants complete control over the client experience, shopping deal, inventory, content and other functionality of their online shopping cart websites.

Due to remarkable benefits it offers, Magento ecommerce development has become quite popular in today ecommerce market. Thousands of online shopping cart website owners use Magento as a platform for their successful running online stores. One of the very important factors for its popularity is its Eye catching and attractive User friendly Designs making it an enjoyable experience for every visitors on your website and thereby increasing the ROI Magento shopping cart is one of latest in market with advance features of open source shopping cart that it helps you to build Not only a great shopping cart website in very short time but comes with many extra-ordinary functionality.

Functionality with feature such as advanced reporting and analysis help you to know current sales trend and customer’s activity. Through the Reporting advance functionality your Online EBusiness is enable automatically for maximum efficiency according to your targets.Magento multi store development is the stand alone feature that comes only with Magento shopping cart and thus gives edge from other shopping carts software in the market.

With the help of Magento shopping cart it’s an easy task to manage and control your multiple online store and websites from single as well as simple administrative panel and also offers various payment options and currencies with convenient single page checkout.One great feature about Magento ecommerce customization is it is SEO friendliness. SEO friendly shopping cart website design helps you to get you website rank well and perform well in search engines like Google, Yahoo… It gives you an extra ordinary functionality to generate xml code, Meta tag, title, keyword for your product and category pages.In a nutshell- Its unique characteristics are completely scalable architecture, easy customization, unlimited flexibility for skinning, customization and template design, professional and community support and smooth integration with 3rd party applications.

Labels: Customization, Development, Ecommerce, Magento, Open Source, SEO, shopping cart

• Magento Integration analysis and implementation
• Magento Template design/ Magento Skinning, custom markup and CSS coding
  
• Magento Custom Design / Magento Themes Design
  
• Magento Extension Development
• Online Store Development Using Magento
• Version upgrades, security patches and maintenance
  
• Magento Ecommerce Store optimization and performance tuning

Labels: Customization, Development, Ecommerce, Magento, Open Source, shopping cart