Archive for August, 2011

Installing Community Extensions via Command Line (SSH)

Posted by: Karen Sunday, August 28th, 2011

I never really liked the idea of having to change permissions of my magento install to add on new extensions.

So here is how to do via SSH. Obviously this only works if you have SSH access to your website.

Firstly, navigate to base magento directory

./mage mage-setup
./mage -V
./mage list-channels
./mage install connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/
  e.g. ./mage install connect20.magentocommerce.com/community/ IG_LightBox

Finally do a chown -R on your directories to whatever your’s is, otherwise they will have root:root

I was running this on magento 1.6 using version 2.0 of magento connect to get the extension info.

Superb!

Posted in Administering Magento | 1 Comment »

Fedex Shipping in Magento 1.6

Posted by: Karen Thursday, August 25th, 2011

What’s Going On Then?

Magento have implemented Fedex Web Services in the 1.6 release. Up until this release they were using the  Fedex ‘DC’ API which is due to be retired in early 2012.  So what’s the impact on you?

  1. You can’t just put in your Fedex number and get rates
  2. You may need to install Soap on your web server to use Fedex
  3. You may be forced to run tests on the Fedex ‘test’ environment before you can get access to the ‘live’ Fedex rates
  4. It’s no longer possible to display Home and Ground rates simultaneously. This is not supported by the Web Services API
  5. Not on 1.6? You could find you need to patch your site early 2012
  6. In the Magento Fedex configuration you are now asked for an Account Id, Meter Number, Key, and Password.  All of these are required to retrieve rates

Installing SOAP

SOAP is a protocol used by web services to communicate. It runs over http and in this instance is used as the communication mechanism between Magento and Fedex.

SOAP is often installed on a web server by default, if in doubt ask your hosting provider.  I wrote a blog around installation for those doing themselves.

How do I get a Fedex Web Service Login?

  1. Sign up at the Fedex Developer Resource Center – this will give you a account id and meter number
  2. Obtain a Developer Account Number,Test Key, Meter Number
  3.  You will be emailed a Test Password to use

Okay, let’s Get Rates!

  1. Open Magento Admin Fedex Shipping Methods
  2. Enter Account ID, Meter Number, Key and Password
  3. Set Sandbox Mode to Yes
  4. Decide whether to show Residential or Commercial Rates
  5. Configure rest of settings as desired
  6. Go get rates and test
  7. Once you have completed testing then you can go get your Production Login, test and go live

What Else?

Being constrained to only show residential or commercial rates can cause problems. Residential rates tend to be more expensive, so you may lose sales if you set to this. Plus showing Home Delivery is not great when dealing with commercial customers, they may get confused.

How Can WebShopApps Help?

We offer a couple of extensions in this space which can assist you with your Fedex rate management.

The Residential Selector extension will show a residential/commercial dropdown on the cart shipping quote and during account/address setup, thus allowing your customers to select their address type.

Our USA Dimensional Shipping extension which has been around since 2010 is a mature intelligent implementation of Fedex WebServices. Amongst other things it supports:

  • Dimensional Weight
  • Packaging awkward sized items separately
  • Displaying Home Delivery as Ground

Both extensions also have our fantastic logging capability which allows you to see whats going on under the hood. So if you get no rates back from Fedex you can see why, and not just see the evil red error message!

Posted in Shipping in Magento | 7 Comments »

Gold Sponsors X.Commerce Innovate 2011

Posted by: Karen Monday, August 22nd, 2011

It’s a great day for WebShopApps.com. After 3 years of extremely hard work, I’m pleased to announce we are finally stepping out and doing some marketing!  We are official Gold Sponsors of X.Commerce Innovate 2011. We are extremely excited about seeing what the future for Magento will be, and believe this conference will be where the foundation stones are laid.

WebShopApps are looking at the new opportunities for our product set and will be liasing closely with Magento and fellow peers at the conference to determine what is in the best interests for WebShopApps and our customers.

For many of you who are our clients please come and say hello at our stand, and for those of you wishing to understand more about how WebShopApps can help you in your business then come have a chat with us. We look forward to seeing you there.

 

 

Posted in Company News | 4 Comments »