Popular Payment Gateways

Ecommerce payment gateways are critical components of any online store, as they enable merchants to accept payments from customers securely and conveniently. There are many... April 2023

Getting Started with Magento Open Source

Magento Northern Ireland Open Source allows you to build a unique online store from the ground up. Standard Features Magento Open Source includes everything you... November 2022

Magento - WebP Image Format Conversion

An introduction to image optimisation in Magento Northern Ireland Image Optimisation is an increasingly important step improve page speed and search engine performance of your... September 2022

Aheadworks switch to subscription model

Aheadworks will be removing Composer keys and download access for existing customers and switching entirely to a subscription model. From February 2022 Aheadworks announced it... March 2022

Magento Store Hierarchy

Before you start building-out your Magento website you must first plan your store hierarchy. Magento’s hierarchy is referred to throughout your store’s configuration. Each store... February 2022

Optimising Magento 2 in Easy Steps

Some (fairly) simple step-by-step instructions to ensure your Magento Belfast 2 store is running the best it can. While most of these options should only... December 2021

The Future of Magento

The Mage Open Source Community Alliance have published an open letter to the Magento community to announce a new initiative designed to focus on ensuring... September 2021

Magento 2 Blog Extensions

While Magento Belfast isn’t the go-to platform for blogs it can be useful for store owners to have a quick and easy way to post... July 2021

Notes: Magento 2 Directory Structure

Magento 1 A brief reminder of the Magento 1 folder structure: app/code followed by either /core for core files /community for third party extensions /local... April 2021

Magento 2.4.2

The latest version of Shopify Northern Ireland has been released - Magento version 2.4.2 is the usual mix of security updates, performance and some improvements... March 2021

What is Magento Open Source?

Previously known as Magento Community Edition, Magento Open Source is the ecommerce platform. Adobe which acquired Magento in 2018 has confirmed the open source edition... November 2020

Moving on from Magento: OpenMage and Mage One

While many companies have already upgraded to Magento 2 or moved on to alternative ecommerce platforms like Shopify, many smaller companies or larger companies with... September 2020

Coronavirus: Ecommerce in a Pandemic

Online sellers need to keep on top of the impact COVID—19 is and will continue to have on retailers. The links below are some thoughts... April 2020

Coronavirus: Managing your Magento ecommerce store in Lockdown

The UK has now entered lockdown with everyone being told to stay at home. The spread of coronavirus (COVID—19) continues to increase day by day... March 2020

Magento 2: Show address fields on the user registration form

This post shows you how to add the customer address fields to the customer registration page. It uses the existing setShowAddressFields method for displaying the... March 2020

Choose Magento ecommerce in Belfast, Northern Ireland

If you are a business in Belfast or Northern Ireland who is looking to expand your presence online, Magento is a great platform to take... February 2020

Magento 2.3.3

The latest version of Magento has been released - Magento version 2.3.3 is all about security and performance. Security Support has been added to Magento... October 2019

Magento 1: End of life

Magento 1’s expected end of life is fast approaching. Many, many merchants are still up and running on the system need to think about what... May 2019

Magento 2 Configurable Product Import

Magento 2 allows configurable products to be imported through the CMS. Unlike Magento 1 where Magmi generally did all the hard work when it came... April 2019

Magento Code: Magento 2 Cache Refresh Script

This is a stand alone script which can be called to refresh the cache in Magento 2 The script hooks into Bootstrap to generate a... April 2019

Magento Code: Magento 2 Indexer Script

This is a stand alone script which can be called to reindex a Magento 2 Site The script will create a unique instance of the... April 2019

Magento 1 to Magento 2 Migration Process (Part 1)

While the Magento 1 platform is still active and supported there’s less urgency to switch-up to Magento 2. There are benefits to upgrading to Magento... March 2019

Magento 1 Ongoing Support and End of life

Some thoughts on the expected demise of Magento 1. Magento 1 - Official End Date The official end date of the Magento 1 project was... March 2019

Magento Development in Northern Ireland

Magento Developer I’ve been building Magento sites since 2009, from standard catalogue sites to bespoke custom-built product generators. I’ve worked on a range of Magento... December 2018

Magento Belfast

Magento eCommerce was released on March 31, 2008, by Varien and developed on Zend Framework, it's a feature-rich ecommerce platform that provides merchants with unprecedented... December 2018

Magento2 – Show/hide layered navigation on category pages

Magento Admin Panel > Catalog > Categories Click into the category you want to update and then expand the “Design”. To remove a layered navigation... June 2018

Magento2 CLI: Set Ubuntu PHP Version to match LAMPP/XAMPP

The Magento2 Command Line Interface (CLI) needs to use the same version of PHP as your local web environment. You can check this by setting... June 2018

Enable Magento2 Command-Line Interface (CLI) on Linux

For both development, ongoing management and scheduled tasks Magento’s Command Line Interface is able to do it all. To enable CLI for Magento to you’ll... May 2018

CMS blocks disappear after version 1.9.2.2 upgrade or SUPEE-6788 patch

Magento version 1.9.2.2 and patch SUPEE-6788 both introduce a new security feature to Magento. Blocks on the front-end have to be enabled or whitelisted before... February 2018

Magento Code: Seasonal sales link

A lot of sites have a seasonal sale which needs turned on and promoted at different times during the year . This code takes the... February 2018

Checkout problems upgrading to Magento 1.9.3.4+

Magento version 1.9.3.4 include patch SUPEE-9767 V2 which includes security patching for the checkout process. For your current front-end templates to work with this patch... October 2017

Upgrading Magento 1 through the Magento Connect Downloader

If you don’t fancy upgrading Magento 1 through command line, you can upgrade Magento core using Magento’s in-built Magento Connect Downloader. Load yoursite.com/downloader. Login with... October 2017

Upgrading Magento 1 through command line

Alternative: Upgrade Magento using the Magento Connect Downloader Upgrading Magento is a must to keep your store in top-top condition, protect your customers and your... October 2017

Magento Server Transfer – Tried and Tested Method

Moving an entire Magento site from one server to another or between hosts can be a daunting task for non-server administrators. I’m going to try... August 2017

Ordering assets in Magento 2

This one will come in useful until Magento 2 sorts itself out. For some reason, Magento 2 has no way to order assets out of... August 2017

Magento Code: Innoexts Currency Pricing Module Price and Special Price Import via SSH

Magento Code: Innoexts Currency Pricing Modual Price and Special Price Imports vis SSH Standard Price Import Use the following command: `php /home/var/public/html/magento/shell/Innoexts/CurrencyPricing/Catalog/Product/Price/Compound/Import.php --file-path /var/import/ --file-filename standard_price.csv`... June 2017

Magento Code: Check an import directory for new product CSVs and process using a Magmi profile

This script will first scan the var/import directory for all CSV files starting “import-” using the glob() function in PHP. It will return an array... June 2017

Magento: What are Sage Pay Orphan Transactions?

This is a regular issue when using Sage Pay with Magento that needs a bit of explaining. Sage Pay transactions started by the customer are stored... June 2017

Create a custom URL rewrite/redirect in Magento

You can use a custom rewrite to redirect CMS pages, or any other type of page. For example, if you change the URL key of the privacy... May 2017

Magento Code: Include currency switcher in the header or footer with Foundation mark-up

It is easy to set-up multi-currencies in Magento. This code  allows you to quickly include a currency drop down or link to  the header or... May 2017

Magento Code: Add a drop down attribute and display it on the product page in custom HTML

Magento makes it really easy to expand the usual product attributes through the Admin Panel. While these can be added to the product page in... May 2017

Magento header.phtml basic user account and basket code

Some useful shippets for including customer account and a basic basket/cart product count in the header of Magento. This should be added to header.html in... March 2017

Magento Issue: Unable to sort configurable product attribute drop down options

Having encountered this issue a couple of times I though it was time to make a note. This is a fix for an issue in... January 2017

Magento product types and what to use them for

Magento comes preconfigured with a number of different product types. These range from simple bog-standard products to digital downloads and configurable products with a myriad... December 2016

MySQL TRUNCATE command: Quickly and easily clear out the Magento database

This is a simple list of SQL commands which can be used to clear out various parts of the Magento database. It’ll be useful when... November 2016

Session Management and Validation Settings in Magento Configuration

Cookie and session management is an important aspect of any ecommerce store. Everything from a customer’s cart, checkout process and recently viewed products is made... November 2016

All-in-one Google Analytics tracking in Magento

Simple single script to add Google’s conversion tracking to your Magento ecommerce website. The code should be added into the footer.phtml file within your current template.... November 2016

All-in-one Facebook Pixel Code for Magento ecommerce

Simple single script to add Facebook’s Pixel Code tracking to your Magento ecommerce website. The code should be added into the head.phtml file within your... November 2016

Why you should be using Magento for your ecommerce website

There are many ecommerce platforms around, many offer a similar experience but time and time again Magento comes to the top of the list. Magento... November 2016

Getting your product information ready for importing to your website

Product imports are an inevitable part of any ecommerce project. At some point the information you have on your products wherever it may be stored... October 2016

Add Facebook Pixel Code to Magento Success Page

Update: Instead of this, try the All-in-one Facebook Pixel Code method. It’s easier to maintain. Facebook Pixel Code is a new and even more complicated... September 2016

Quickfix: Quickly add a new Magento CMS page template

Sometimes it’s necessary to quickly add a template for a page into the Magento content management system. This can be done via a custom extension... July 2016

Magento Code: Bulk add a new product attribute to all store attribute sets

This little script is an excellent time saver for adding a new attribute to all of the attribute sets configured in your Magento store. There are a few... July 2016

Magento Code: UK and Ireland counties for region drop-down in addresses

Full list of counties for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Run this SQL against your Magento database to replace the existing region text box... April 2016

Magento Issue: One Page Checkout appearing to jump to the bottom of the page after address is entered

This is a recurring issue with Magento’s standard One Page Checkout. It most often occurs when the template has been updated to include lots of... February 2016

PayPal IPN notification errors with Magento

This one has popped up a few times in the past. When PayPal has been set-up and configured to with Magento the store owner receives... February 2016

Magento 2.0: An introduction to what has changed

At long last Magento 2.0 has finally be released into the wild. These are a few of the reasons merchants and developers should consider moving... December 2015

M1 Get your Magento store ready for Black Friday

This is an old tutorial is for Magento 1. An updated version for Magento 2 can be found here: Optimising Magento 2 in Easy Steps.... November 2015

Magento: Clear all caches through command line

When making certain changes to Magento, such as modifying source files, installing extensions, reverting changes, it is necessary to clear the cache in order for... November 2015

M1 Import Values to Dropdown/Multiple Select Attributes

This code is for Magento 1, it won’t work in Magento 2. Sometime when you need to deal with import of lots of values for... July 2015

M1 Batch updater for Magento Product SKUs

This is a Magento 1 script, it won’t work for Magento 2. The script will loop through a CSV file and update the SKU on... July 2015

Upgrading to Google’s Universal Analytics in Magento

The new Google Universal Analytics provides the opportunity for own measurement values and dimensions and allow you to track usage across platforms. Universal Analytics introduces a... May 2015

Add Google Analytics ecommerce:addTransaction to your Magento Store

A quick and way way to record transactions to Google Universal Analytics. First add this piece of PHP to your success page at the end... May 2015

Add Static Blocks to CMS Pages in Admin

Static Blocks are an easy way to include snippets of code or text on many pages throughout your Magento store. They can be used to... May 2015

Useful Excel Commands for Magento Image Import

Magento image import can be pretty flaky with case and spaces in the filename of images being uploaded. =CONCATENATE("/",SUBSTITUTE(LOWER(F2)," ","")) The above code will add... May 2015

Magento Issue: Subtotal and Grand Total prices double at Cart/Checkout stages

Have recently encountered an issue with prices in Magento Checkout appearing doubled. There are a number of solutions online which seem to (in various combinations)... February 2015