klikklik

Recurly and Drupal Integration

klikklik — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:54:09 +0000

We are about to finish a project which objective was to make Drupal talk to Recurly.
Recurly is a great service taking care of recurring billing, subscriptions, comes with billing pages and allows to easily connect to payment gateways.
But it gets a little complicated if you decide to use your own payment pages served by Drupal. There is no official Drupal module available to take make the API calls.
So far we can only show a sneak-peak on the interface – but we’re almost there!

We will post some more info on the module once the project is completed. Please contact us should you require more information.

Mobile Commerce / mCommerce with Magento

klikklik — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:03:22 +0000

By now we all know what eCommerce is – but what is mCommerce?
A definition reads “mCommerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices such as cellular telephone”. It’s not a new thing – 13 years ago the first eCommerce transactions took place when a Coke could be ordered via SMS at vending-machines in Finland.
Mobile Commerce came a long way and got a boost when the new generation of smartphones were introduced. Especially the iPhone and its apps helped mCommerce to grow since moving from SMS to dedicated applications made transactions more safe and the shopping experience sophisticated.

With Magento Mobile porting an existing online shop to a dedicated mobile application is very easy and affordable.
We had the pleasure to be the first ones in South Africa to test Magento Mobile in the beta phase long before the official release – and it rocks!
The configuration is fairly simple, the interface on the iPhone very slick and it is affordable. I especially like the fact that products are managed at one place – so no headaches from managing products on two systems – and that your existing checkout processes are imported. If your shop is set up correctly you’ve got within days your very own native iPhone app where people can browse, shop and pay your products.
The only small downside is that Magento Mobile is at the moment only available on the iPhone – but Magento promised to release a version for Android and iPad still this year.
Talk to us if you want to take your shop to the phone and make business with ‘mobile’ users.

Magento | Change Product Default Sort Order

klikklik — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:00:13 +0000

By default the sort order for products in Magento is from old to new.
That is sometimes not wanted, especially if you are working with a “Latest Products” category.

To change the sorting from new to old you have to edit the file Toolbar.php in App/Code/Core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Product/List/.
Search for
protected $_direction = 'asc';
and replace it with
protected $_direction = 'desc';

Please back up your files before replacing the existing one (you are working on the core here) and note that this is a system-wide change.

Magento | Change Admin favicon

klikklik — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:11:22 +0000

For some customers we don’t only change the frontend look&feel but also the backend of Magento. Once you have a customized version of the backend you would most probably want to change the favicon as well.
The default location for the admin favicon.ico is:
http://yourdomain.com/skin/adminhtml/default/default/favicon.ico
Replace the icon and don’t forget to refresh Magento’s cache.

If that shouldn’t help, go to the backend and view the page source. Right in the beginning of the file is a tag looking like

The path inside the href shows you where the favicon is.

Magento: Empty page when editing configurable products

klikklik — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:36:51 +0000

I just had a situation where I clicked on “edit” on a configurable product in the Magento Admin and… Nothing happened. I got presented a blank page.
This is most likely caused because of a memory size limitation in the php.ini file. Good news is that it’s easy to change:
You just have to edit the php.ini file on your server (or ask the hosting provider to do so) and change the value ‘memory_limit’ to at least 128M. It should look like this “memory_limit = 128M”.
Good luck!

Top 5 Checkout Killer

klikklik — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:00:47 +0000

Many studies show that the checkout process on ecommerce pages are often a killer. I’m sure you’ve also added some products to a shopping basket but never checked that basket out.
Let’s have a look what 1.267 users answered to “Why would you abandon an order when shopping online?” asked by Webcredible:

Having to register before buying – 29%
Hidden charges at the checkout – 41%
Lengthy checkout process – 10%
Not clear delivery details – 11%
Phone number not provided on website – 8%

The results are not really surprising – and can be fixed on most ecommerce pages. Even better is that Magento has a out-of-the-box ‘checkout without registering’ feature. For almost a third of all users was this a deal-breaker.

Magento – getBaseURL

klikklik — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:21:25 +0000

Already in programing Kindergarden you learn that you should avoid static links wherever possible.
But how can you call the source URL of an image, a file or the domain itself in Magento? It’s fairly simple as you can see here:

to get –> http://mydomain.com

to get –> http://mydomain.com/index.php

to get –> http://mydomain.com/media

to get –> http://mydomain.com/skin

to get –> http://mydomain.com/js

Magento HowTo: Google Analytics

klikklik — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:36:40 +0000

One of the first questions after installing Magento is “How do I add the Google Analytics code to my Magento page?”
Good news: It’s pretty easy, you don’t have to edit code on any page, Magento comes with a handy Google features in the admin section.
Open the Magento Admin and browse to
-> System
-> Configuration
-> then under ‘Sales’ you’ll find ‘Google API’
-> Open the very first entry ‘Google Analytics’

You now have to pick the ‘Yes’ option under enable and paste your account number and click the ‘Save Config’ button
But what’s the account number?
Every Analytics account has a unique ID or account number starting with “UA-” followed by a couple of numbers.
You can find your account number in the piece of code you got when adding a new page to your analytics account.

Have fun tracking your customers!