Please join Magento™ and Coalfire for this special PCI Compliance Webinar. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that all companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. No matter what size your business is, you must maintain PCI compliance or risk fines. There are many advantages to having PCI compliance, including letting customers know that you protect sensitive information.

Topics include:

• Advanced education about PCI DSS requirements and how they affect Magento merchants.
• Learn about the 12 requirements for PCI compliance validation and the details that every merchant should know to attain and sustain compliance.
• Discover details about the PCI DSS process and a cost-effective solution for protecting your business.
• Coalfire will also address your questions about PCI compliance.

This is the second webinar in this series on PCI Compliance. To view the first webinar “PCI Compliance 101 for Magento Merchants” please visit the webinar archive page of the Magento website.

I will be updating this PDF as and when ever I get the new content so Please subscribe to this post from below link. When ever I update this PDF I will post the comment, so that you will get an Email alert.

All the Content of this PDF is taken from Magento Site, Magento Blogs, Wikis and other private Blogs.

This PDF includes 203 Pages and around 13MB size, Below are the Table of Contents of the PDF.

Table of Contents

Magento Wiki Table of Contents. 9

CHAPTER 1 What is Magento. 15

Elements and Terminologies of Magento Sites. 15

Magento’s Architecture. 16

Chapter 2: Getting Started with Magento. 22

System Requirements. 22

Downloading Magento. 22

Installing and Configuring Magento. 23

Downloader Install 23

Default Install 24

Appendix: PHP5 CGI Setup. 25

Configuration during Installation. 28

Troubleshooting Installation. 28

Introduction to the Administrative Panel 28

Creating Multiple Websites and Stores. 28

Permissions. 29

Cache Management. 31

Chapter 3: Set Up Your Catalog. 32

Overview of Catalog Concepts. 32

Setting Up Defaults. 33

Creating Categories. 36

Assigning products at the category level 38

Assigning designs at the category level 39

Using static blocks with categories. 40

Attributes. 40

Creating an Attribute. 40

Manage Label / Options. 43

Managing Attribute Sets. 44

Creating an Attribute Set. 44

Manage Products. 47

Setting up configuration and Attributes. 48

Creating a Simple Product. 48

Creating a Configurable Product. 56

Creating a Grouped Product. 60

Related Products, Up-sells, Cross-sells. 62

Product Comparisons. 64

Layered Navigation. 65

Assigning Designs at the product level 67

Stock Management. 67

Creating stock management default options. 67

Creating stock management on the product level 69

Batch Updates. 70

URL Rewrites. 72

Configuration Settings. 72

Editing URL Rewrites. 73

Creating URL Rewrites. 74

Chapter 4: Get Ready for Selling. 75

Checkout Process. 75

Adding New Order RSS to Google. 81

Localization Settings. 82

Locale Settings. 82

Currency. 82

Taxes. 84

Tax Rates. 84

Tax Classes. 86

Tax Rules. 87

Shipping Options. 88

Shipping Settings. 88

Shipping Methods. 90

Accepting Money. 102

Payment Methods and PayPal Accounts. 102

Zero Subtotal Checkout. 105

Check/Money Order. 105

Purchase Order (PO). 107

Authorize.net. 108

PayflowPro. 109

PayPal Express. 111

PayPal Direct. 112

PayPal Standard. 113

PayPal UK Express. 115

PayPal UK Direct. 116

Google Checkout. 117

Chapter 5: Promotions, Marketing and Content Pages. 124

Customer Personalization. 124

Wishlist. 124

Compare Products. 125

Recently Viewed/Compared Products. 126

New Products. 127

RSS Feeds. 128

Tier Pricing. 129

Catalog Price Rules. 130

Rule Information. 131

Conditions. 131

Actions. 132

Shopping Cart Price Rules. 133

Rule Information. 134

Conditions. 135

Actions. 135

Newsletters. 137

Newsletter Configuration. 137

Newsletter Templates. 138

Newsletter Queue. 139

Newsletter Subscribers. 139

Newsletter Problem Reports. 140

Static Blocks. 140

Landing Pages. 142

General Information. 143

Custom Design. 143

Meta Data. 144

Polls. 145

Poll Information. 145

Poll Answers. 146

Search Synonyms and Re-directs. 146

Quick Search. 147

Advanced Search. 149

Chapter 6: Customers. 150

Default Customer Options. 150

Contact Options and Emails. 150

Updating Email Template Files Directly. 151

Updating Email Templates Via Magento Admin. 151

Email Sender. 152

Contact Us. 152

Creating Customers. 152

In Front-end. 153

In Admin. 154

Customer Groups. 155

Creating Customer Groups. 155

Managing Customer Groups. 156

Batch Updates to Customers. 156

Front-End and Back-End functionality for Customer Accounts. 157

Front-End. 157

Back-End. 160

Online Customers. 161

Chapter 7: Reports and Analytics. 163

Reports. 163

Sales Reports. 163

Shopping Cart Reports. 165

Products Reports. 165

Customers Reports. 166

Review Reports. 167

Tags Reports. 167

Search Terms. 168

Dashboard. 168

Analytics. 169

Chapter 8: Managing Orders. 170

Overview of Order Functionality. 170

Creating Orders. 170

Terminology. 170

Managing and Editing Orders. 171

Creating Orders. 171

Accessing the Order Page. 171

Creating the Order. 172

Sales Order Options. 175

Invoice Options. 175

Shipment Options. 177

Credit Memo Options. 179

Managing and Editing Orders. 181

Chapter 9: User-Generated Content. 185

Ratings and Reviews. 185

Managing Ratings. 185

Managing Reviews. 186

Manage Tags. 188

Email to a Friend Options. 190

Chapter 10: Upgrading Magento. 192

Upgrading Magento Via SSH.. 192

User Management- Manage Roles. 193

Magento’s Import/Export Profile. 196

Magento Free Shipping. 198

Importing Newsletter Subscribers. 201

Replacing the Logo Image in Transactional Emails. 203

Limiting Free Shipping to the Continental US. 204

Tax Rules Configuration and Settings. 205

Example of files edited in Excel (when opening on notepad or any other text editor. 205

Proper file format with double quotation marks. 205

Promotions, Discounts and Conditional Selection. 206

Issue. 206

Solution. 206

Gift Cards and Customer Store Credits in the Magento Enterprise Edition. 208

Google Base Integration in Magento. 208

Magento in 60 languages!. 209

We have 23 locales that are 85% – 100% complete. 209

13 locales that are actively translated (20% – 85%). 209

And 24 more locales that are in the process: 210

Magento Connect: Quickbooks Integration via T-HUB. 211

Video: Magento via iPhone. 211

Video: Custom Product Options in Magento 1.1. 212

Download the PDF HERE TheUnical_Magento_User_Guide.pdf

Download Other Magento PDF Useful Manuals Below

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_design_Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_System Admin Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_developer_Guide.pdf

I will be updating this PDF as and when ever I get the new content so Please subscribe to this post from below link. When ever I update this PDF I will post the comment, so that you will get an Email alert.

All the Content of this PDF is taken from Magento Site, Magento Blogs, Wikis and other private Blogs.

This PDF includes 198 Pages and around 6MB size, Below are the Table of Contents of the PDF.

Table of Contents

Magento Developer User Guide. 9

Add Featured Products to Home Page. 9

Add Bestsellers to Home Page using the best-selling box of Blue Theme. 9

How to Fix the Breadcrumbs of Inactive Categories. 11

Create Payment Method Module. 13

Create Shipping Method Module. 21

Module doesn’t appear in frontend. 35

Module doesn’t appear in admin. 36

Backend shows errormessage when displaying the shippingmethod. 36

Magento Architecture. 37

Page request flow.. 37

Preliminary core modules dependency diagram.. 37

Changing and Customizing Magento Code. 39

Subversion. 39

Upgrading to a newer version. 40

Custom Modules. 42

Blocks. 43

Step 2) Add Block configuration to catalog.xml 45

Step 4) Extend Mage_Catalog_Block_Category_View.. 47

Step 6) Add new blocks to the app/etc/local.xml 48

Magento Easy Lightbox. 49

http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/1487/magento-easy-lightbox. 49

CSS Resources. 50

Creating CSS buttons vs Image buttons. 52

The CSS. 53

Add Home Link with functional active state to Menu Bar (Alternative Method). 55

Magento’s Import/Export Profile. 60

The New Magento Connect Design (part 1). 62

Installing Magento Enterprise stand-alone on OS X. 63

Pre-Production System Configuration Checklist. 65

1: System -> Configure -> General 65

2: System > Configuration > Sales. 66

3: System -> Advanced. 67

4: System -> Transactional Emails. 68

Top-10 Most Popular Magento Extensions This Week (Jan 31 – Feb. 5). 70

Multi-site Domain Name Setup. 71

1: Categories. 71

2: Store Configuration in the Magento Admin. 71

3: Store Configuration in the Server. 74

4: We’re Ready to Go!. 75

Magento Free Shipping. 76

Changing the Magento ‘favicon’ 79

How to Embed Google Custom Search in Magento. 80

Reward Points System.. 84

Reward Points System.. 84

Magento Development: Introduction to Magento Dataflow.. 85

Dataflow profile definition. 85

Adapter definition. 85

Magento DataFlow standard adapters. 86

Customer and Product adapters. 86

Parser definition. 88

Magento DataFlow standard parsers. 88

Standard customer and product entity parsers. 89

Mapping values. 90

Importing Newsletter Subscribers. 91

Varien’s Popular Open Source Magento eCommerce Software to Ship with Zend Server Community Edition PHP Stack  93

Availability. 94

Replacing the Logo Image in Transactional Emails. 95

How to Configure Magento Widgets. 96

Overview.. 96

What are Widgets?. 96

How to Develop a Widget. 98

Terminology. 98

Widget Examples in Magento CE 1.4, EE 1.6. 99

Tutorial: Creating a Magento Widget, Part 1. 100

Introduction. 100

Widget Basics. 100

Tutorial: Creating a Magento Widget, Part 2. 112

Introduction. 112

Available widget configuration options, types and definitions. 112

Multiple Websites, Importing Catalog with Different Price and Currencies. 123

Magento Connect Extensions for Facebook Integration. 125

Embedding HTML in the Footer. 126

Limiting Free Shipping to the Continental US. 127

Tax Rules Configuration and Settings. 128

Example of files edited in Excel (when opening on notepad or any other text editor. 128

Proper file format with double quotation marks. 128

Video: Security, Permission Roles, Encryption, PA-DSS and Logging in the Magento Enterprise Edition   129

Promotions, Discounts and Conditional Selection. 130

Issue. 130

Solution. 130

Magento Bug Tracker RSS. 132

Rich Merchandising Suite (RMS). 133

CMS+, Enhanced Content Management System.. 134

Magento Database Repair Tool 135

Magento Database Repair Tool More. 136

Usage Instructions. 136

Crash-course for the impatient. 136

Test it before running on a Production Environment!. 136

Step-by step. 137

How to Set Up a Cron Job. 139

Magento and crontab. 139

Windows. 141

Other solutions. 142

Inner workings. 142

Error logging. 143

Configuration. 143

Magento’s Cronjobs. 145

How to restore a broken admin access. 146

Log in with the new account. 147

Further information. 147

Using Magento on Amazon EC2. 148

Optimizing Performance with Apache. 148

1. MySQL Configuration. 149

2. Apache KeepAlives. 149

3. PHP Opcode Cache. 150

4. Memory-based Filesystem.. 150

Public and Free Magento AMIs. 150

Launching an EC2 Magento Demo Store. 151

Benchmarking with ApacheBench. 151

Benchmarking with Pingdom.. 151

Optimizing Performance with Nginx. 152

Data Persistance with EBS (Elastic Block Storage). 152

EC2 Pricing and FAQs. 155

Performance Improvements in Next Magento Release. 155

Todos. 155

Understanding Magento Scalability and Performance. 156

Easy Wins. 156

Measure your Magento. 158

Three Steps to Improve Scalability and Performance. 160

Going Further. 161

Conclusion. 162

Gift Cards and Customer Store Credits in the Magento Enterprise Edition. 163

Improve Conversions in 60 Seconds. 164

Magento & Zend Server Benchmarks. 165

Methods & Tools Used. 165

Magento Version Benchmarks. 166

Apache + mod-php VS Apache + Zend Server. 167

Zend Server Configuration for Magento. 168

Response time. 170

Additional technical details about the tests. 172

Things to test in the next benchmark campaign. 172

Conclusion. 173

Content Staging and Merging in the Magento Enterprise Edition. 174

Speed up your store by combining, compressing and caching JS and CSS– Fooman Speedster. 175

Upgrades Made Easy. 177

CSRF Vulnerability in Web Applications (and how to avoid it in the Magento Admin). 178

Live Chat Extension. 179

Magento Connect: Gift Certificates / Virtual Cards Extension. 180

How To Setup Multiple Magento Stores. 181

TYPO3 + Magento = TypoGento. 182

Google Base Integration in Magento. 182

Video: Google Website Optimizer Integration in Magento 1.1.7. 182

Tutorial: Integrating 3rd Party CMS Content Within Magento. 183

Getting Started. 183

Create a Local Code Pool Module. 184

Create a Layout. 185

Extending the Technique. 185

Magento Connect: Simple Configurable Products Extension. 186

A/B Split & Multivariable Testing with Google Website Optimizer. 186

50+ Payment Gateways Now Supported in Magento. 188

Blank Theme available through MagentoConnect. 190

OpenERP Integration Available Via Magento Connect. 191

Magento in 60 languages!. 192

We have 23 locales that are 85% – 100% complete. 192

13 locales that are actively translated (20% – 85%). 192

And 24 more locales that are in the process: 193

Magento Connect: Quickbooks Integration via T-HUB. 194

Video: Magento via iPhone. 195

Wordpress Integration Extension Available Via Magento Connect. 195

Video: Custom Product Options in Magento 1.1. 196

Magento PHPDocs Now Available. 196

osCommerce Migration Tool – Now Available. 197

Building Configurable Products Fast. 197

Magento / Drupal Integration Project. 198

Download the PDF HERE TheUnical_Magento_developer_Guide.pdf

Download Other Magento PDF Useful Manuals Below

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_design_Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_System Admin Guide.pdf

Other MagentoManual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_User_Guide.pdf

Learn more by visiting the Magento mobile product page and sign-up to be the first to launch a native mobile app, fully integrated with Magento.

I will be updating this PDF as and when ever I get the new content so Please subscribe to this post from below link. When ever I update this PDF I will post the comment, so that you will get an Email alert.

All the Content of this PDF is taken from Magento Site, Magento Blogs, Wikis and other private Blogs.

This PDF includes 67 Pages and around 1MB size, Below are the Table of Contents of the PDF.

Table of Contents

System Admin’s Guide to Magento. 6

Installing Magento Enterprise stand-alone on OS X. 6

Changing and Customizing Magento Code. 8

Subversion. 8

Upgrading to a newer version. 9

Custom Modules. 11

Blocks. 12

Pre-Production System Configuration Checklist. 14

1: System -> Configure -> General 14

2: System > Configuration > Sales. 15

3: System -> Advanced. 16

4: System -> Transactional Emails. 17

Multi-site Domain Name Setup. 19

1: Categories. 19

2: Store Configuration in the Magento Admin. 19

3: Store Configuration in the Server. 22

4: We’re Ready to Go!. 23

Varien’s Popular Open Source Magento eCommerce Software to Ship with Zend Server Community Edition PHP Stack  24

Availability. 25

Magento Database Repair Tool 26

Magento Database Repair Tool More. 27

Usage Instructions. 27

Crash-course for the impatient. 27

Test it before running on a Production Environment!. 27

Step-by step. 28

How to Set Up a Cron Job. 30

Magento and crontab. 30

Windows. 32

Other solutions. 33

Inner workings. 33

Error logging. 34

Configuration. 34

Magento’s Cronjobs. 36

How to restore a broken admin access. 37

Log in with the new account. 38

Further information. 38

Using Magento on Amazon EC2. 39

Optimizing Performance with Apache. 39

1. MySQL Configuration. 40

2. Apache KeepAlives. 40

3. PHP Opcode Cache. 41

4. Memory-based Filesystem.. 41

Public and Free Magento AMIs. 41

Launching an EC2 Magento Demo Store. 42

Benchmarking with ApacheBench. 42

Benchmarking with Pingdom.. 42

Optimizing Performance with Nginx. 43

Data Persistance with EBS (Elastic Block Storage). 43

EC2 Pricing and FAQs. 46

Performance Improvements in Next Magento Release. 46

Todos. 46

Understanding Magento Scalability and Performance. 47

Easy Wins. 47

Measure your Magento. 49

Three Steps to Improve Scalability and Performance. 51

Going Further. 52

Conclusion. 53

Magento & Zend Server Benchmarks. 54

Methods & Tools Used. 54

Magento Version Benchmarks. 55

Apache + mod-php VS Apache + Zend Server. 56

Zend Server Configuration for Magento. 57

Response time. 59

Additional technical details about the tests. 61

Things to test in the next benchmark campaign. 61

Conclusion. 62

Speed up your store by combining, compressing and caching JS and CSS– Fooman Speedster. 63

Upgrades Made Easy. 65

CSRF Vulnerability in Web Applications (and how to avoid it in the Magento Admin). 66

How To Setup Multiple Magento Stores. 67

Video: Google Website Optimizer Integration in Magento 1.1.7. 67

Download the PDF HERE TheUnical_Magento_System Admin Guide.pdf

Download Other Magento PDF Useful Manuals Below

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_design_Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_developer_Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_User_Guide.pdf

I will be updating this PDF as and when ever I get the new content so Please subscribe to this post from below link. When ever I update this PDF I will post the comment, so that you will get an Email alert.

All the Content of this PDF is taken from Magento Site, Magento Blogs, Wikis and other private Blogs.

This PDF includes 40Pages and around 1MB size, Below are the Table of Contents of the PDF.

Table of Contents

Designer’s Guide to Magento. 3

Magento Design Terminologies. 3

Website and Store. 4

Interface. 5

Themes. 6

Blocks. 7

Working with Magento Themes. 8

How Magento Does Themes Different from Others. 9

How to Create a Theme. 10

Say Hello to Multiple Themes. 13

Hierarchy of Themes. 14

Building Your Theme. 16

Introducing Blocks and Layout. 16

Step by Step Guide to Building a Theme. 20

Intro to Layouts. 23

How Layout Works. 23

The system is built this way in order to allow seamless addition and removal of modules without effecting other modules in the system. Anatomy of Layout. 24

Rules of XML. 26

Quick Exercises to Get You Started. 26

CSS Resources. 28

Creating CSS buttons vs Image buttons. 30

The CSS. 31

Add Home Link with functional active state to Menu Bar (Alternative Method). 34

Embedding HTML in the Footer. 39

Blank Theme available through MagentoConnect. 40

Download the PDF HERE TheUnical_Magento_design_Guide.pdf

Download Other Magento PDF Useful Manuals Below

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_System Admin Guide.pdf

Other MagentoManual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_developer_Guide.pdf

Other Magento Manual Downloads TheUnical_Magento_User_Guide.pdf

The Magento team is pleased to announce the launch of Magento mobile, a new product that will allow Magento merchants to easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.  The product includes a new administrative manager (which we wrote about earlier this week), a native iPhone app that is fully customizable (colors, images, buttons, etc), and a service where Magento manages the submission and maintenance process for the iTunes App Store.

The Mobile Opportunity

We’re witnessing a large shift online, where consumers are becoming more comfortable with using mobile devices to access the internet and purchase products.  What we’re also seeing is that native apps are becoming the preferred way that consumers engage with brands and mobile storefronts.  This makes sense since mobile-browser apps (WAPs) are often very slow and don’t offer the rich, compelling experiences that native apps do.  What is also interesting is that Amazon and eBay have the largest share of total mobile-commerce revenues, and their native apps are just mobile versions of their web stores, with perhaps a couple native features sprinkled in.  How effective is this approach?  In 2009, eBay drove $500M in mobile revenues.  In 2010, they project $1.5B.  The era of mobile commerce has begun!

The Mobile Challenge for Merchants

As big an opportunity as mobile is, merchant have difficulty moving forward for several reasons.  First, creating tightly-integrated mobile + website experiences requires a tremendous amount of development, especially when you bring multiple mobile devices into the equation.  Second, there is the cost to develop the native applications (and even find the resources), as well as the time and money to submit and support this application in the iTunes marketplace (and/or other marketplaces).  If we estimate the costs of each of these items, the prices become so high that it is no wonder why so many brands are not yet taking advantage of this opportunity.  We’re glad to announce that there is now another way.

Introducing Magento Mobile

Magento mobile includes:
1. A new admin manager, which will be distributed as an extension that is available for Community edition 1.3+, Enterprise 1.6+, and Professional 1.8+.
2. A fully-customizable iPhone application, which includes several best of breed features that users will love
3. A submission process that Magento manages for a store owner so that they can focus on their core business while we manage the complexity in the background for a low annual fee.

Launch Partner:  The North Face (Europe)

The North Face, will be launching the very first iPhone app “shop” powered by Magento mobile.  The app will be available in early June in Sweden & the UK only.  Here is a quick demo of the app while we were in Paris for the annualBargento event.

Launch Partner:  PayPal Mobile

PayPal is investing heavily in mobile-payments technology, and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve worked closely with PayPal to integrate their new product into Magento mobile.  Merchants who already use PayPal will benefit by offering a native payment experience that drives higher conversations.

Product Features & Benefits

Seamless Storefront Integration
With the new Magento-mobile admin, you’ll bring the functional powerhouse of Magento eCommerce to your mobile commerce channel, including full integration with your store’s catalog, checkout, inventory, reporting, and much more!

Manage Multiple Devices
Easily manage multiple devices with a single installation. Coming later this year, easily extend your mobile presence to the iPad and Android devices.

Hassle Free Submissions
Supporting a native app can be time consuming and tedious, so we manage the submission & support lifecycle for one low monthly fee. We manage the complexity of mobile apps so you can focus on running your business!

Fully Customizable
Deploy new device-specific features and branded themes with just a few clicks. Quickly update the colors and appearance of your app with the new Magento mobile admin, even after customers have downloaded your app.

Engage Your Customers
If you want to build deeper relationships with your most profitable customers, smartphones are the way to do it. From geo-targeted push notifications to immersive native experiences, mobile apps unlock new opportunities that will take your business to the next level!

Low Cost of Ownership
Magento’s cost-efficient approach allows you to bring best-in-class mobile experience to your customers without the high price tag. Pay only for the features and devices you want while Magento handles the ongoing maintenance of your app in the iTunes marketplace.

Sign up and Pricing

There are limited number of spots available for the first release of this product, and anyone interested in joining the priority list can now sign up on the official Magento-mobile product page.  Pricing at this time will only be shared with those who are selected for the limited release, and we will announce the full price list to the community shortly.

What’s Next?

Moving forward, we plan to build a marketplace of extensions for each mobile device (e.g. digital coupons, augmented reality, etc.) using our successful eCommerce extension marketplace, Magneto Connect, which essentially makes this product the world’s first ever mobile-commerce platform!  We also plan to launch new apps for the iPad and Android devices later this year. ]]> http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-announcing-the-launch-of-magento-mobile/feed/ 3 http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-introduces-a-new-magento-mobile-admin/ http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-introduces-a-new-magento-mobile-admin/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 03:16:13 +0000 Steven Robert http://blog.theunical.com/?p=306535

“Mobile is the next frontier for commerce.  We expect our new mCommerce product to bring the same level of scale and innovation to mobile as our eCommerce platform did for the web.” – Roy Rubin, CEO of Magento

Hello from Amsterdam!  As I write this post, I’ve just returned from the Meet Magento event here in the Netherlands, and getting ready for our next two community events in Paris and Leipzig.  There have been quite a few questions about the new mobile product that we’ll be announcing this Friday, and perhaps the best way to explain it would be to give you a quick tour of what we’ve been working on these last few months.  But first, some background…

The Rise of Native-Mobile Applications

To set the stage for what you’re about to see, it is important to share our observations on the two ways that users interact with storefronts on mobile devices:  mobile web (browser) apps and native mobile apps.  The first is nothing new to Magento.  When we launched our first iPhone-optimized theme back in 2008, we learned that while optimizing your online store for mobile browsers is important, consumers are engaging even more deeply with native mobile applications.  Retailers are responding to this fast-growing trend by building custom, native applications for the iPhone, the iPad, Android, etc.  Even more interesting are native apps that offer an integrated commerce experience with the web channel, the most notable being eBay, which drove $500M in mobile-channel sales last year and is projecting $1.5B this year.

But as we looked into this trend, and saw the rising demand for native applications, we found that they are becoming very costly to build, and increasingly complicated to manage and scale.  This difficultly only grows when we take into account the next logical step, which is to build fully-integrated experiences that allow consumers, for example, to begin a purchase on the web and later complete it on a mobile device.  There had to be a better way.

Introducing the Magento mobile admin

To help our merchants respond to these opportunities & challenges, we built a product that you’ll soon be able to use for Enterprise Edition 1.6+, Professional Edition 1.8+, and Community Edition 1.3+. It includes the ability to bring your store catalog into fully-featured commerce apps, beginning with the iPhone.  The theme of the app, including background images and button colors, can be customized to match your brand.  The apps will also be fully integrated with your existing eCommerce and merchandizing tools, allowing you to deploy cross-channel shopping experiences across multiple devices quickly and easily.

Here is an early wireframe of our product from a few months ago…

…and here is what the finished version looks like.  Notice the ability to add/edit templates, features, and themes.

Even after customers download your app, you’ll be able to continually update the visual appearance of buttons, text, etc.

Transforming Apps into Mobile-Commerce Platforms

In addition to managing the visual appearance, you’ll also be able to decide which features to make available to your users.  And coming soon, merchants will be able to extend their mobile-commerce feature sets in the way they do with their eCommerce offerings.  Through Magento Connect, store owners will be able to easily install and deploy new features for mobile device such as private sales, digital coupons, line-skipping programs for mobile + in-store purchases, augmented reality.  The possibilities will only continue to evolve as the amount of eligible devices increases.  This approach essentially turns each mobile app that is managed through this tool into its own open platform, which we hope will lead to a tremendous amount of new innovation at the intersection of commerce and mobile.

Of course, deploying new functionality to native apps such as the iPhone requires a resubmission of the code to the app store and ongoing management to ensure the application is stable and in compliance.  To make this process easier, Magento will manage this process for merchants at a low fee.  All you need to do is configure your mobile app and we take care of the rest, including security patches, stability upgrades, bug fixes, etc.  How great is that!

]]> http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-introduces-a-new-magento-mobile-admin/feed/ 0 http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-save-admin-session-for-long-time-magento-tips/ http://blog.theunical.com/ecommerce/shopping-carts/magento-cart/magento-save-admin-session-for-long-time-magento-tips/#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:00:19 +0000 Steven Robert http://blog.theunical.com/?p=306023 Many its a big issue, the Magento takes us to login screen after 20minutes. so when customers are working on any CMS pages or Email templates, it will not save the data, and simply go to login page when we click on save.

Here is the best solution for you Comment the following line and replace with the below line files, this way the session exists for a longer time.

Goto /app/etc/local.xml and replace the below line.

<!– <session_save><![CDATA[db]]></session_save> –>

<session_save><![CDATA[files]]></session_save>

1. Cache refresh
2. image path being CASE SENSITIVE
3. incorrect image path in catalog_product_entity_media_gallery while porting
4. Make sure you have GD installed fine on your server.,.. if not re-install it ..and also disable open_basedir function for this account.
5. php_value memory_limit : supports only values in M and not in G you can’t give 1G instead give it as 1024M.

Hope this save lot of time for other Magento users.