Blog posts Tagged ‘magento extensions’
Commative launches its latest Magento theme: Ultimento 3!
Ultimento Magento Theme
We have been a bit quiet on the blog front this week, but with good reason: We are pleased to announce that Ultimento 3 has been released. It boasts a ton of new features and extensions including:
- Exploding menu/Mega-menu extension that directly ties to the product categories on your standard Magento admin panel
- Product carousel extension enables you to show more products on just one row so you don’t take up valuable real estate space
- Rich snippets for improved SEO
- Magento homepage slider extension has added functionality and spaces for promoting your company and products
- Homepage Social Links bring Facebook and Google+ direct to your customers
- Magento shopping cart extension gives you a dynamic drop down menu for easy access to the cart from any page
- Pinterest is now part of product pag social bookmarks and marketing links
….And much more. We have also included two brand new Magento templates which have been significantly modified to make them easier to edit and customize. Almost all of your site’s content can now be edited directly through Magento’s Admin Panel.
We are mighty happy with this latest release. In fact, we decided to use it to power our own store.
Please check out our new demo site and reach out to us with your thoughts and comments.
The Commative Team
6 steps to solve 99% of Magento problems
Before attempting to install any Magento themes or Magento extensions on your store you should (in this order):
1. Disable the Magento compilation
Magento’s compilation is set under System > Tools > Compilation in your Magento admin – you can re-run the compilation afterwards 
.
2. Flush all Magento caches
Magento cache management is under System > Cache Management in your Magento admin or you can also delete all files and folders under var/cache and var/sessions.
3. Re-index all Magento indexes
Magento index management is under System > Index Management in your Magento admin or you can delete all files under var/locks.
4. Log out of the Magento admin.
Just click “Log Out” in the upper right corner .
5. Clear your browser cache and cookies.
Depending on the browser you use, cache and cookie management is accessed differently. Try Ctrl+Shift+Delete if you’re on a PC.
6. Log back in the admin in a new window.
Login in the Magento admin will perform database updates that may be necessary. Use a new browser window or tab after clearing your cache and cookies to be absolutely sure you don’t have any session cookie stored in the browser.
These 6 steps are already included in Ultimento’s documentation (in the installation instructions and complete troubleshooting checklist for example) but they pretty much apply to any Magento themes and Magento extensions and they solve the vast majority of all Magento problems .
Speed up Magento with these simple admin settings
When you’re ready to go live with your Magento store, remember to setup your admin for maximum performance! These are the settings that will significantly speed up your Magento installation:
1. Enable cache
Most users are well aware of this one .
Just navigate to System > Cache Management and enable all cache types.
Magento Cache Management
2. Re-index data
Regularly indexing Magento data will also have some impact on performance.
Under System > Index Management select all indexes and hit the “Reindex Data” submit button.
Magento Index Management
3. Enable JavaScript file merging
Combining all JavaScript files into one will greatly reduce the number of HTTP requests your Magento site makes to the server and will have a nice impact on speed.
Navigate to System > Configuration > Developer > JavaScript Settings and select “Yes” under “Merge JavaScript Files”.
Combine All JavaScript Files
4. Combine CSS files
Like with JavaScript files, combining all CSS files into one will reduce load time and increase speed. Magento also has an admin setting for that but we don’t recommend turning it – it is much better to use Ultimento’s Magento themes which are truly optimized for speed. In Ultimento there is only 1 combined CSS file that is also compressed and minified.
If you’re not running Ultimento, you can combine all CSS files into one via the Magento admin:
Go to System > Configuration > Developer > CSS settings and select “Yes” for “Merge CSS Files”.
Combine All CSS Files
5. Turn off the logs
On a production Magento installation make sure all logs are turned off!
The settings are under System > Configuration > Developer > Log Settings.
Magento Log
6. Enable the compilation
Magento’s compilation is a great tool to speed up a production installation.
Go to System > Tools > Compilation and hit “Run Compilation Process”.
Magento Compilation
Of course there’s many other things besides these admin settings you can do to speed up your Magento store! The most important is to:
- Use a Magento theme that is truly optimized for speed
- Host your store on a Magento optimized server
- Don’t load your Magento installation with too many extensions
But the admin configuration is so commonly overlooked yet so easy to apply!
Ultimento’s “all products” page
Want to display all the products in your Magento store? Use Ultimento’s built-in “Browse All Products” page!
The “all products” Magento page is a very useful feature of Ultimento that will increase your store’s conversion rates and improve usability. Our research shows a difference in user retention and conversion rates when there is a page listing all the store’s products versus when it’s not there. Even if the users may not actually use that page! We saw an increase in user retention and store conversions regardless of the size of the catalog which is somewhat counter intuitive (of course the “all products” page gets paginated).
Ultimento’s “all products” page is also a great place to start if you want something more customize -such as for example a page featuring all products with a specific attribute, or best sellers for examples.
Here’s the “Browse All Products” page on Ultimento’s live demo and here’s how to control which products appear on the “all products” page.
Free Magento extension: Disable Admin Notifications
Tired of all these popup notifications that show up when you login your Magento admin? This free Magento extension will give you control over whether or not they appear! You can now easily disable admin notifications in your Magento. Read full post »
Compatibility and optimization with the latest Magento CE release
One of the most appreciated features of Ultimento is that its Magento themes and Magento extensions are constantly updated. Each new release bring new extensions and modules, exiting improvements, and feature requests. Don’t believe me? Check out the previous release notes!
The good news is that all updates are free for life with all Ultimento packages (within the same branch), and the Max package even includes free upgrades for life (i.e. even future branches such as Ultimento 2.x etc)!
Most Magento themes out there are compatible with a specific version of the Magento platform – and when it’s time to upgrade your Magento to a new CE release, you’re screwed. Same goes for most Magento extensions (either free or paid). That’s why even today most Magento themes and extensions out there are not compatible with Magento 1.5.x which was released over 2 months ago (at the time of writing – today’s date is 04/09/11)!
On the other end, we quickly released a new updated version of Ultimento that was not only fully compatible with the latest Magento release, but also optimized to leverage the latest changes in the eCommerce platform! So you’ll always be able to make the most of the new Magento features and enhancements. Read full post »
