Blog

If you are looking for FREE extensions for Magento 2 here are a few of them. It is not a TOP series and extensions ordered randomly. It's just a cool stuff that we use daily and want to share with you.

1. Blog Extension by Magefan

Allows managing a professional blog on Magento 2 stores. It has the biggest number of features on the market.

2. Login As Customer Extension by Magefan

With this extension, you are able to enter customer's account via admin panel, so you can check customer issue or place an order for a customer.

3. SMTP Extension by MagePal

Allows to setup SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)  and sending emails over SMTP server like Gmail, Amazon SES, Office360, Mailgun, SendGrid, Mandrill and more.

If you have installed or updated Magento 2 extension and received the error message e.g.:

Module 'Company_Module' from 'app/code/Company/Module' has been already defined in 'vendor/company/module'.

this means that you have 2 versions of the extension:

1) in the folder app/code/Company/Module
2) in the folder vendor/company/module

In vendor folder Magento stores all components (extensions, themes, language packages) that have been installed using Composer.

As installing or updating extensions via Composer is preferred, you need to remove extension folder app/code/Company/Module (please don't forget about a backup before removal) and run installation commands.

In Magento 2 you cannot perform the reindex from the back-office. To make a reindex you need use PuTTY or another terminal application to run the CLI commands, e.g. command for reindex:

php bin/magento indexer:reindex

With FREE Magento 2 Command Line (CLI) Extension by Magefan you can run CLI commands directly from Magento 2 admin panel.

Once you install Magefan CLI extension a new menu item "System > Command Line" will be added to the admin menu.

If you use Magefan Blog Extension on Magento 2.2.x or greater and receive the error message:

1 exception(s):
Exception #0 (Magento\Framework\Config\Dom\ValidationException): Element 'block', attribute 'class': [facet 'pattern'] The value '\Magento\Framework\View\Element\Text\ListText' is not accepted by the pattern '[A-Z][_a-zA-Z\d]*(\\[A-Z][_a-zA-Z\d]*)*'.
Line: 982

Element 'block', attribute 'class': '\Magento\Framework\View\Element\Text\ListText' is not a valid value of the atomic type 'blockClassType'.
Line: 982


Exception #0 (Magento\Framework\Config\Dom\ValidationException): Element 'block', attribute 'class': [facet 'pattern'] The value '\Magento\Framework\View\Element\Text\ListText' is not accepted by the pattern '[A-Z][_a-zA-Z\d]*(\\[A-Z][_a-zA-Z\d]*)*'.
Line: 982

Element 'block', attribute 'class': '\Magento\Framework\View\Element\Text\ListText' is not a valid value of the atomic type 'blockClassType'.
Line: 982

First please make sure that you have updated the blog extension to the newest version.

If you need to extend Magento 2 Blog Module by Magefan and add a new custom text field to Blog Post edit page in Magento 2 Admin panel (Content  > Blog > Posts) you must to create a simple custom Magento 2 Extension.

You can download a sample extension from our GitHub page or you can create it manually using the steps below:

1. Create composer.json file

app/code/Magefan/BlogCustomField/composer.json

{
    "name": "magefan/module-blog-custom-field",
    "description": "Implements Blog functionality on Magento 2 store",
    "require": {
        "magefan/module-blog" : ">=2.8.0"
    },
    "type": "magento2-module",
    "version": "2.0.0",
    "license": [
        "OSL-3.0",
        "AFL-3.0"
    ],
    "autoload": {
        "files": [ "registration.php" ],
        "psr-4": {
            "Magefan\\BlogCustomField\\": ""
        }
    }
}

If you use a third-party theme for your Magento 2 store and have enabled "Use Magefan Blog Comments" as a blog comment option and flushed the Magento cache

but you still cannot see the comments on the blog post page on the storefront, please compare layout file blog_post_view.xml in your theme folder

If you receive the error message "No such entity.", "No such entity with" or "No such entity with customerId" in Magento 2, the issue usually occurred when you try to load not existing object via Magento 2 Repository Class.

To debug this issue, please open the file

vendor/magento/framework/Exception/NoSuchEntityException.php

If you need to display tag count in the Magento 2 Blog tag cloud sidebar, you need to extend the tags sidebar template.

To do this:

1. Copy the template file from the Blog extension folder

view/frontend/templates/sidebar/tag_claud.phtml

to your theme folder

app/design/frontend/ThemeVendor/themename/Magefan_Blog/templates/sidebar/tag_claud.phtml

SmartWave Porto Theme for Magneto 2 includes Magefan Blog Extension out of the box and adds the blog link to the header top links.

If you want to remove the blog from the top links, please follow these steps:

1. Create a new file in your child theme (ThemeVendor/theme-name) directory:

app/design/frontend/ThemeVendor/theme-name/Magefan_Blog/layout/default.xml 

If you receive the error:

Please upgrade your database: Run "bin/magento setup:upgrade" from the Magento root directory. 
The following modules are outdated:
Vendor_Module schema: current version - x.x.x, required version - z.z.z
Vendor_Module data: current version - x.x.x., required version - z.z.z

And you have already run these commands:

composer update vendor/module-name
bin/magento setup:upgrade