Magento Static Blocks

Static blocks are a Magento feature that makes adding content to your Magento site easy and convenient. Static blocks allow for your Magento site to be updated via the admin panel making it faster than having to “hard-code” every time you need to make a change to your website. Static blocks can be used anywhere on your Magento site to display text, images, & navigation.  Some Magento designs have static blocks already in place for your convenience; however, you might have to install them yourself. Below is a simple tutorial on how to install a static block in the footer of your Magento site

Step One: Create Static Block in Your Magento Admin

Magento Admin Panel—>Static Blocks—>Add New Block

1) Name your Static Block, in this case Custom footer Links

2) Label the Identifier (This is the link you will use to call the block later) in this case, custom-footer-links

3) Choose what store view you would like it to render in

4) Set Status to Enabled

2)Now for the fun part! Add your navigation links to the block.   Make sure to use <style> to make them match your sites color and theme.

Step Two: Inserting Code to Call the Static Block

This part is going to require you to FTP into your Magento site and modify footer.phtml
app—>design—>frontend—->default—>(your template)—>template—>page—>footer.phtml

Find where in the footer you want your navigation links to display and insert:
<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock(‘cms/block’)->setBlockId(‘custom-footer-links’)->toHtml(); ?>

Now most of the time the Static block should display just fine but in some cases you are going to have do some extra steps to have the block display.

1) Instead of inserting:
<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock(‘cms/block’)->setBlockId(‘custom-footer-links’)->toHtml(); ?>

Use:

<reference name=”left”>
<block type=”cms/block” name=”left.permanent.callout”>
<action method=”setBlockId”><block_id>custom-footer-links</block_id>
</action>
</block>
</reference>

2)Modify catalog.xml
app—>design—>frontend—>default—>f002—>layout—>catalog.xml

Add under <!– Mage_Catalog –>

<block type=”cms/block” name=”left.permanent.callout”>
<action method=”setBlockId”><block_id>custom-footer-links</block_id>
</action>
</block>

And voila! Your Static Blocks should be displaying and easily accessible through Your Magento Admin panel. Remember Static Blocks can be inserted just about anywhere in your Magento site and are a great feature to use when content needs to be updated frequently. If you have any comments or suggestions on Magento Static Blocks feel free to leave them below.

Looking for an eCommerce shopping cart that will meet the needs of your business and stay within your budget can seem overwhelming at first. Shopping around to find the right solution can be a daunting task.   Wading through the seemingly endless varieties of shopping cart packages can take many hours and can be very frustrating!   Each company boasts that their system is the right one for you so determining which platform to run your eCommerce business requires time and patience.  Here are some points to keep in mind when purchasing an eCommerce shopping cart system.

Easy To Use Interface
The interface should be easy to use and understand for both you and the customer. Any eCommerce system worth its salt should be able to import products from an excel sheet, organize them into categories and track inventory.  Writing descriptions and modifying products should not be a difficult task.
On the consumer end, your eCommerce shopping cart should be easy to navigate and the checkout process must be simple and secure. Your products should also be categorized and displayed in a logical and intuitive way.

Search Engine Friendly
If people can’t find your eCommerce site then you’re not going to make any sales. Clean code and the ability modify URLs and header tags should be standard.  Your website’s loading speed must be fast and without any lag.  Lag is any noticeable delay that the user experiences when accessing your website.

Analytics and Reporting
A good eCommerce system will have the ability to track traffic, search queries, shopping cart abandonment, most viewed items and have automated sale reports. Knowing who is coming to your site, what they’re buying, their likes and dislikes, and how they are finding you can go a long way in shaping your marketing strategy.

Marketing Promotions and Tools
Promoting products, offering an email or newsletter sign-up, free shipping options and up-sells are a few features a shopping cart are the features of a superior shopping cart. Getting the customer to the site is only half the battle!  Encouraging them to purchase items is a lot easier if your eCommerce system is equipped with the ability to promote your products.

These are just a few pointers and suggestions when looking for an eCommerce system.  Here at InteractOne, we offer Magento eCommerce and osCommerce shopping cart solutions. If you are interested in either system for your business please contact us to learn more!

Magento plug-ins are one of the many reasons to consider a Magento shopping cart for your business’ eCommerce platform. These plug-ins or extensions provide a level of usability and functionality not matched by other shopping cart systems. There are plug-ins to make Magento faster, improve SEO, track email campaigns, improve website search and much more. Here are a few that are not only free but effective, a must for any Magento shopping cart.

Fooman Speedster – This extension takes all JS (JavaScript) and CSS (cascading style sheets) and combines, compresses and caches it, significantly speeding up Magento. It is relatively easy to install and, with speed becoming more important for both web users and search engines, this is one Magento extension not to ignore.

Lazzymonks Twitter – Including social media with marketing efforts is a must today. Lazzymonks Twitter extension allows easy integration of Twitter into Magento. It displays Twitter feeds in your menu and allows you to update your Twitter status from the admin panel.

MailChimp ECommerce360 Reporting – Using email as part of your marketing strategy? MailChimp simplifies measurement of ROI. This Magento extension takes away all the compiling and processing of excel spreadsheets and simplifies it into easy-to-read graphs and charts. It measures email clicks and follows them until a purchase is completed!

Canonical URL’s for Magento – This extension protects your content from duplicate content penalties. By inserting the link rel=”canonical” to the head of all your magento pages you can ensure that your site gets credit for the unique content it provides.

There you have it; some free advice about free Magento extensions & plug-ins from InteractOne, a certified Enterprise-level provider of Magento. For a full list, please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect .  If you have any Magento extensions you feel should be listed, or any questions about installation, feel free to share your comments below.

Website loading speed is a major factor when it comes to search engine rankings, retaining viewer interest and turning viewers into customers.   Although Magento is a fast loading Ecommerce website out of the box but there are many ways to tweak it for more speed. Increased speed can easily translate into more sales and better rankings in the  search engine result pages (SERPS).

One of the easiest ways to improve Magento’s speed is to add the Fooman Speedster extension. This extension is free and can be found here.  Load time after this extension is installed is vastly improved and is a must for streamlining your online store.

Another easy way to speed up Magento is to take out this line of code php_value memory_limit 128M which is found in the root .htaccess file. Eliminating this line of code gives magento more memory to work with which will improve page load times greatly.

Enabling Gzip on your server is another great way to speed up your Magento eCommerce site.  You can do this by updateing your .htacess file. First find “enable apache served files” in the file. Next change that code to the following:

############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

# Insert filter
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

# Netscape 4.x has some problems…
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Don’t compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

# Make sure proxies don’t deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

Hold on to your hats!! Off you go! These  modifications and updates are sure to improve the performance of your Magento eCommerce website, convert into better standings in the SERPS, and result in happier customers and more visitors.

Local web developer InteractOne recently announced it has qualified as enterprise-level partner and certified developer with Magento, an elite e-commerce package. As a Magento Certified Developer, InteractOne can market and promote itself as a Magento Enterprise Partner to pursue and capture the growing market demand for Magento.

InteractOne, located in Blue Ash, Ohio, is one of the region’s largest developers of websites for small and medium-sized business. Magento, developed by Varien, Inc., is the fastest-growing open source e-commerce software, with more than 750,000 downloads.

Unlike the open source (free) version, Magento Enterprise is fee-based for businesses requiring a high level of support and sophisticated e-commerce features.

As a Magento Enterprise Partner, InteractOne receives support and backing from Varien in pursuing new business only available to partners focused on and committed to the Enterprise Edition.

“This opens doors for InteractOne to the larger e-commerce clients that may have been out of reach for us in the past,” said InteractOne President Brian Dwyer. “We have had the programming talent in place for some time, but Magento Enterprise puts a market-recognized tool in our hands.”

InteractOne has provided web development and Internet services to medium and small business since 1998. As the world goes online, we’ve helped many companies develop and establish very successful internet strategies, websites, and e-commerce sites. We focus on providing in-person, one-to-one service to businesses and organizations and are committed to ensuring that our clients receive careful attention and the highest quality when we plan, develop, design, and construct a website. Helping our clients succeed on the Internet is InteractOne’s primary objective. More information can be found at www.InteractOne.com.

Read more about Magento at:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/compare
and
http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/enterprise-community-faqs

Columbia Maryland – 4 January 2010. Allergy Grocer, an online grocer that provides specialty allergen free foods relaunched their Magento shopping cart on InteractOne Ecommerce servers. Initially launched in December 2009 Allergy Grocer was experiencing slow load times and issues with their “Shop By Allergen” attributes. InteractOne was able to migrate the site from the previous host and do a database level rewrite of the “Shop By Allergen” attributes – all with less than 6 hrs of total downtime (most of which occurred after business hours EST). InteractOne has also been able to assist Allergy Grocer with custom shipping options, enhanced order fulfillment, email marketing, email auto-response and promotion development. With month over month increases in website traffic, lightning fast load times, higher conversion rates and increased sales Allergy Grocer looks to continue it’s partnership with InteractOne in providing the ultimate online shopping destination for allergy free foods. Visit: AllergyGrocer.com

Cincinnati Ohio – 12 October 2009. Haute Chocolate, a specialty chocolate confections retailer has launched their new online store developed by InteractOne. The new store is based on Magento, Varien’s open source e-commerce platform, and allows shoppers to browse and purchase Haute Chocolate’s full line of confections online.

Featuring easy to use category navigation, quick load times and extensive product relationships, shoppers can easily find what they are looking for and also receive great recommendations based on past orders and real time selections. Customizations to the administration system allow for stock tracking and seamless order fulfillment via Haute Chocolate’s retail locations.

Powered by InteractOne’s Rackspace Ecommerce cluster the site is guaranteed top performance even during peak load times. A successful Ecommerce 2009 holiday season confirmed the new online store and partnership with InteractOne a winning solution.

Visit Site: Haute-Chocolate.com