Monthly Archives: 2019

Magento is one of the most powerful open source e-commerce platforms which provides online merchants with the solutions for their stores and full control over the functionality of their websites. 

Magento is being used by a wide range of retailers from small regional stores to the ones on a global level with huge sales volume and extensive customer databases. 

There are 2 versions of Magento with the 1st said "to extinct" by June 2020. There are plenty of reasons you might want to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2, but let’s analyze the main of them.

So, the main reasons to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2 are:

1. Support

As it was stated by June 2020 Magento 1 will no longer be supported meaning there won’t be any updates for the platform. This is the main reason for migrating to Magento 2 since without support there can be crucial consequences on security, not speaking about the inability to stand out the competition of constantly developing Magento 2 websites.

2. Security

It is not a secret that driving more traffic to one’s website is the goal of every marketing strategy. There are so many websites out there selling some excellent stuff. Furthermore, there is a great number of appearing new ones. That is why it is hard to withstand the extensive competition. That's what makes marketers constantly search for some new ways of promotion to get more traffic to their websites.

Actually, this is what they are there for, don't you agree?

To be honest, it is pretty hard to differentiate and single out some best ways to drive more traffic to one’s website since it majorly depends on the kind of business the niche belongs to.

However, there are some basic and the most proving methods that will cost you just your time and determination to make your website noticeable and recognizable.

Want to know what are those ways and how to apply them to your business? Better keep reading.

So, as it was already said there are plenty of ways to generate more customers. However,

In order to enable Mautic API log in to your Mautic Account and press the Setting icon in the top right corner.

 Then, choose  Configuration from the list of settings in the flyout menu.

Finally, go to the API Settings tab and enable the API option. Besides, enable the HTTP basic auth options in case your API uses it (e.g. Magento 2 Mautic Integration extension)

Don't forget to press the Save&Close button.

Besides, it is recommended to clear the Mautic cache.

There are several ways to do that. The easiest is to go to the /var/cache folder and delete its content. If you want to do it via CLI command, navigate to the Mautic root folder and run the following:

rm -rf var/cache/*

The new cache files will be generated after Mautic is refreshed in the browser.

Email marketing is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customers and build a strong brand image. Magento comes with a set of built-in tools, like email templates, to manage your campaigns. However, they aren't always enough for the ultimate results.

The Magento 2 Mautic Integration offers an efficient solution that allows you to synchronize Magento contacts with Mautic. As a result, you can create better segments and more targeted email campaigns. 

Before we get to that part though, you need to configure the integration first. So, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Mautic integration and configure the required sections.

General Settings

To begin with, you have to fill out the basic details. Navigate to the General section and take the following steps.

1. Enable the extension and enter the product key.

2. Specify the Mautic URL.

3. Choose the Authentication Method.

4. Specify Mautic Login and Password.

5. Enter some random characters in the Webhook

One of the first things you need to do to prepare your store for the sales season is create a "Sale" category. This allows you to gather all discount items in one place and increase sales in Magento.

Easier said than done since usually you need to spend hours adding products to the "Sale" category manually. Only if you don't have tools like Magento 2 Dynamic Category at your disposal. 

It allows you to create a "Sale" category in Magento and make it work automatically, all year long. Intrigued? 

Today you'll learn how to create an automatic "Sale" category with a few simple options.

Step 1: Create a Sale Category

Before we create the dynamic category rule, you need to create a new category. That's where you want to add all of the discounted items.

In our case, it's the "Sale" subcategory within the Men's category.

Step 2: Fill out Basic Rule Information

Now it's time to create a sale category rule. For that navigate to Catalog > Dynamic Category > Rules and press the Add New Rule button.

Categories help you organize your catalog and customers — to find products they are interested in faster. However, the "behind-the-scenes" of category management is not that positive.

You often have to spend hours adding and removing products from categories. Especially when a sale season is approaching. 

But the struggle ends with the solution we're offering you today — Magento 2 Dynamic Category. It helps you completely automatic categories like Brands, Sale, Newly Added, Most Rated, etc. 

So, today you'll learn how to create dynamic categories in Magento and make them work completely autonomously.

1. Fill Out Basic Rule Information

Once you install the extension, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Dynamic Category and enable it.

Then go to Catalog > Dynamic Category > Rules and press the Add New Rule to create a new dynamic category rule. Here you need to: 

• Enable the rule.
• Set the Rule Name and add a Description if needed.
• Specify the Priority

If you decided to remove Magento 2 Dynamic Category Extension, please follow the steps below. You can contact our team for a free consultation in case you have any issues with Magefan's extension.

Remove Extension Files

Removing files instruction depends on the way Dynamic Categories extension has been installed in.

1. If you can find the extension files in the folder

app/code/Magefan/DynamicCategory

then remove this folder.

2. If the extension was installed via the composer and its files located in the folder

vendor/magefan/module-dynamic-category

then run composer CLI command to remove it

composer remove magefan/module-dynamic-category

Once extension files have been removed, run these Magento CLI commands:

php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

Remove Extension Data (optional)

Attention!

If you need to update Magento 2 Dynamic Categories Extension by Magefan, please follow the steps below.

Update using composer

If the dynamic categories module was installed via the composer (check if vendor/magefan/module-dynamic-category folder exists), then you need to run these simple CLI commands in Magento 2 directory:

composer remove magefan/module-dynamic-category
composer require magefan/module-dynamic-category ^x.x.x
# replace x.x.x with the version you want to use
php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

Update using archive and FTP

If the dynamic categories module was installed via FTP (check if app/code/Magefan/DynamicCategory folder exists), then follow these commands:

You can install Magento 2 Dynamic Category Extension by Magefan, using composer or archive installation methods.

Installation via composer (recommended)

Please navigate to your Magefan Account > Downloads > Install via Composer to get the composer installation instructions.

Installation using archive and FTP

1. Download Dynamic Category Extension ZIP-Archive from magefan.com website (not GitHub or other sources).
2. Extract files.
3. Copy app folder from the archive to your Magento 2 folder.
   
4. In a command line, using "cd", navigate to your Magento 2 root directory.
5. Run CLI commands:

php bin/magento setup:upgrade
php bin/magento setup:di:compile
php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

Once you have installed the Magento 2 Dynamic Category extension you can start the extension configuration.

There are cases when the Magento sidebar is missing and not showing. Most likely this is because of the "sidebar" or "sidebar.additional" container has been removed from your theme layout.

In order to migrate AheadWorks M2 Blog to Magento 2 Blog, you have to install Magento 2 Blog by Magefan. After that navigate to Admin Panel > Content > Blog > Import and choose the Import from AheadWorks M2.

To Import Aheadworks Blog to Magento 2 Blog:

1. Set a Database Name and User Name.

2. Set a database user Password.

3. Set a Database server host (location of a database) in Database Host field.

4. Set a Table Prefix if there is one.

5. Specify a Store view the blog from AheadWorks is to be imported to.

Once you have finished don't forget to press a Start Import button. Note that you will have to copy featured image files to Magento 2 pub/media/magefan_blog directory once the import is completed.

Search form, categories and sidebar widgets are some of the best ways to improve navigation in your Magento 2 Blog. However, today you're going to learn about some other - Blog Tags.

Tags are used to help readers navigate through your blog faster and more effectively. Tag is a short description of a topic that is used as a keyword to mark blog posts. 

In our Blog tags are displayed at the top of the blog post page, in the sidebar tag cloud and on tags page. 

Take the following steps to create new blog tag in Magento 2:

1. Navigate to Content > Blog > Tags and press Add New Tag button.

2. Make sure you Enable the new Tag.

3. Set the Tag Title and write some Content that will be displayed on the tag page.

Social media has become an ultimate traffic source for a lot of stores. We spend most of our time on social media where we find, perceive and share information. So, it's no wonder social media is a vital element in every marketing campaign now.

Therefore, it not only works for products but blogs as well.

When people find and read an engaging piece, what do they do?

They share it with friends or on their social media pages for others to see. This covers more people who can follow the link and land on your blog page. Correspondingly, you have to let people share your blog posts to get more coverage. And for that, you have to configure social sharing buttons.

To configure social sharing buttons for Magento 2 Blog:

1. Go to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog and find the Social Share Buttons

Getting Google to discover your blog pages is easy. You just need to upload your sitemap to Google Search Console and make sure blog pages are not blocked in the robots.txt file. But that's not quite it. 

You also have to make sure crawlers can index and display these pages in search engines. That's what robots meta tags are for.

So, today you'll learn how to set robot meta tags for your blog using the Magento 2 Blog extension. We won't stop on the directives here, so explore them in our Magento meta robots guide.

Default Robots Meta Tags

Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog to find default meta robots settings for the Author's page. 

The same option is available for Tag and Search pages here. 

Once you set the default robots for the blog tag, author, and search pages, they will be included before the head closing tag in the page HTML.

The only drawback of the default

In order to configure blog design in Magento 2 Blog navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog and find the Design section.

Note: that this option is available only for Blog Plus and Blog Extra users.

In this section you are able to choose the Layouts for Blog Post, Category, Tag, Author, Search and Index Pages.

It can be empty, 1 column, 2 columns with right bar or left bar or 3 columns. In case you have some designs on your Magento instance they will be displayed here as well. 

Your blog list pages are important since these are the pages your blog readers land on. How you organize posts in lists and what template you choose significantly influences readers' choice: to go on reading or leave. 

In Magento 2 Blog there are several pages you can configure blog posts list for:

• Blog Index Page
• Blog Category Page
• Blog Search Page
• Blog Archive Page
• Blog Tag Page
• Blog Author Page

Post list option is available on each of these pages. So you can choose different templates and numbers of posts for each of them.

However, if you don't, blog extension will take settings from general post list configurations. And that is what you're going to learn about in this article.

To configure post list in Magento 2 Blog go to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog > Post List.

Post List with Pagination

1. Choose the Template for the post lists.
2. Set the number of Posts you want to display Per Page. 
3. Set the Default Short Content Length. It defines the number of characters of

When you create a blog post in Magento you add the post content, tags, categories and fill out the display setting, etc. However, how blog posts look on the frontend is defined by the post view settings. Since Magento 2 Blog extension comes with quite a few, today we'll cover each in detail. 

To configure the blog post page elements, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog > Post Page (Post View). 

Design

Choose between System Settings and Modern Template. 

Posts From The Same Category

Choose whether to Display Posts From the Same Category on the blog post page and set the Number of Posts to display.

And this is how the post from the same category is displayed on the storefront:

Related Posts

• Enable the Display Related Posts option.
• Select the related posts Template. You can Use System Setting, Modern or Slider template.
• Set the Number of Posts you want to be displayed.
• Enable Auto Related Posts if you want related posts to be generated automatically. 

Blog authors add credibility and build trust in your brand. Besides, they allow readers to see someone behind the content rather than a faceless entity.

Creating authors in Magento 2 Blog allows different people to contribute content to your blog. Each has separate accounts and roles. 

However, different Blog editions offer different ways of managing authors. We'll describe all cases to help you find the best option for your blog.

How to Configure Blog Authors in Magento?

Before you start creating blog authors, you need to fill out some basic settings. They help you configure the template for the blog authors pages, set whether to include them in the blog sitemap and enable the author's block on posts.

General settings

In general settings, you define whether to display the author's name on the blog posts at all and whether to add the author's block.

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan

It's not a secret that an active and SEO-optimized blog drives more traffic and contributes to the overall performance of your store. A solution of choice for many, our Basic Magento 2 Blog Extension comes with a multitude of features for effective content management. Yet, as useful as they are, you can go even further.

Blog Plus and Extra plans offer you a range of advanced options that help you create a unique blog. In this article, we'll look closer at the distinctive options these plans offer. So you'll be able to choose the one for your needs.

Ready to get started?

Custom Blog Homepage

Blog Extra edition allows you to create a custom blog homepage with Recent and Featured Posts Widgets using different templates. Thus, you can place certain info right in front of your customers' eyes and ensure the posts you share are relevant for every visitor.

22+ Templates

You can make your blog pages more attractive with the Blog Extra edition. Here, you get 22+ templates

Since the customer-store relationship is based on communication it's best to reach out to them in their local language. Correspondingly, you need to translate email templates in Magento 2 when you set up a multi-language store. 

By default Magento allows you to translate emails by creating multiple copies in different languages. However, depending on the number of languages you have, email templates might just be too much to handle. 

Nevertheless, in this guide, we'll show you how you can translate emails in default Magento and simplify the process with a handy tip.

Translate Email Templates in Default Magento

1. Navigate to Marketing > Communications > Emails Templates and press the Add New Template button.

2. Load the Default Template you want to create the translation for (we have selected the New Order email template as an example).

3. Fill in the Template Information.

Once you've loaded the Magento 2 email template you want to translate, you need to fill in such fields as Template

In case you already have a Facebook App and want it to use "manage_pages" and "publish_pages" permissions you will learn how to enable them in this article.

These permissions are needed for Facebook App to be able to publish posts on your Facebook Page. Once it is in the developer mode you can make any publications on the Facebook page through the Facebook App without these permissions. 

However, being published while in the developer mode posts aren't seen to anyone except for the page administrators and Facebook App developers. That is because Facebook needs to confirm the manage_pages and publish_pages requests, to make them seen to the public.

In order to request "manage_pages" and "publish_pages" permissions take the following steps: 

1. Go to https://developers.facebook.com  and log in to your Facebook Account to continue working with Facebook App. 

2. Navigate to My Apps, choose the Facebook App you want to configure the permissions