Monthly Archives: March 2022

Hello Magento fans,

This has been a very long month for everyone in our Magefan team, and all Ukrainian people. As far as many of you know, Russia started a war against our peaceful country on February 24, 2022.

During the last month, russian soldiers have ruined hundreds of towns and villages in our country, killing thousands of innocent people, including children. Learn more about one month of the war and how you can help in .

Magefan keeps working even in these tough times. This month we have released new extensions and improved the existing ones.

NEW Magento 2 SEO Extension!

Now there is no need to worry about the most important SEO-related features since our new Magento 2 SEO covers them all.

You can enable hreflang tags, configure rich snippets, generate HTML sitemap, add canonical tags, configure redirects, set up open graph tags and Twitter cards all in one place. It is a bundle of 6 separate solutions to improve your SEO and boost revenue.

NEW Magento 2 Rich Snippets Extension

Dear Magefan customers,

It's been a month since all world faced a terror later sworn to not happen again — War! 

It's been a month since all Ukrainians woke up in a new reality where air raid sirens go off several times a day bringing uncertainty and fear of being bombed. 

It's been a month during which hiding in bomb shelters and basements became more often than walking outside. The unprovoked aggression towards our country justified by a dictatorship maniac takes the lives of innocent people. 

Though there is plenty of information around, we'd like to share our thoughts and feeling about these horrifying days Ukrainians are defending the world's right to freedom and peace. 

How Did Ukraine Change?

Everything changed when russian "peacekeepers" came to "save" the Ukrainian nation from imaginary nazis and fascists. And they did succeed, if we can call it so, in "saving" us from a steady supply of essential items like water, food and medicine, cosy homes, beautiful squares, parks, and

Sometimes, pages from the third position in SERP get more clicks than the second or even the first result. This eventually leads to that third page getting the first top position only because people find it more useful.

However, it doesn't happen randomly. How many clicks your page gets in search results depends on how well you optimize your meta tags. In terms of , you have to optimize your meta titles and descriptions with keywords.

But the main question is, how do you optimize the metadata for each product if you have hundreds or even thousands of them?

The answer is — Magento meta tags templates. These templates are also known as the SEO rules that allow you to set up meta titles or descriptions as a template for certain kinds of products.

So, today you'll learn how to create meta tags templates with the .

To create Magento 2 meta tags templates:

1. Navigate to Marketing > SEO by Magefan > SEO Rules and press on the Add New SEO Rule button.

2. Enable a rule and give it a Name.

3.

Canonical tag in Magento is the best way to address content duplication issues and tell search engines about the main version of the page. 

Even though you don't publish the same content on different pages or create the same products multiple times, you still need to add .

So, here you'll learn why do you need to add canonicals and how to do this.

Why Do You Need Canonical Tags in Magento 2?

As an eCommerce website, Magento uses faceted navigation and filtering to help customers find products that fit their needs. It results in parameterized URLs like:

Besides, if you configure the category path to be displayed in the product URL, you'll eventually get multiple URLs that point to the same page:

Content duplication is one of the most common SEO issues plenty of websites face even if they don't practice cross-platform promotion or publish the same content on different pages. 

If you can relate and want to learn how to fix it, you've come to the right place. 

We'll get you familiar with canonical tags and everything you need to know about them to avoid content duplication issues in terms of the . 

To begin with, let's find out what canonical tags are.

What are Canonical Tags?

Canonical tags also referred to as rel="canonical" are pieces of HTML code that define the main version among similar or duplicate pages. Canonical tags tell search engines about the definite URL in case you have pages with similar content or the same page available via different URLs.

So, in other words, you tell Google what version of the page should appear in search results, unless you want search engines to make that choice for you.

You can find the canonical tag in the <head> section of the page

UPD: "As of the morning of February 22, 2024, 528 children were killed and 1226 injured in Ukraine as a result of full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine according to Children of War Governmental portal, " - Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office.

The Russian troops have already killed more than 100 Ukrainian kids.

Tanya, who was at the age of 6 died or dehydration under the rubble of her house.

Alice from Okhtyrka, she was 7, was killed during the shelling of the kindergarten from Grad rockets.

Sofia, from Nova Kahovka, who was 6, was shot with her family. 

How many more children have to die?

How many more children have to be born in the bomb shelters?

How many more days do mothers have to fall asleep in fear that their children might not wake up tomorrow?

These murders are crimes against humanity. They kill our future — our children.

Stop killing Ukrainian children!

Stop this war!

A sitemap is a vital part of the technical SEO that helps you to get your Magento website crawled, indexed, and discovered. Search engines read a sitemap to discover new pages, define how often they are updated, and rank them depending on the validity of information they provide.

However, when it comes to generating sitemaps, people get confused about what sitemap to use.

So, in this article, you'll discover what is the difference between HTML and XML sitemaps, whether you should use them both and find out how use them according to the .

To begin with, let's define what these sitemaps are used for.

What is XML Sitemap?

The is the machine-readable sitemap created in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) that contains information about all of your website URLs along with the metadata. The metadata includes information about how important is the URL, when it was last updated, how frequently it is updated, the relation of the URL to other URLs in the sitemap, etc.

Webmasters use the XML sitemap

Magento 2 HTML Sitemap is a must for better navigation and customer satisfaction since it provides concise information about your website pages. Besides, it makes it easier and faster for search crawlers to discover these pages. However, don't confuse it with the XML sitemap, since are not the same.

Today you'll learn how to create HTML sitemap in Magento 2 without any complex configuration. You just need Magento 2 HTML Sitemap Extension.

How to Create HTML Sitemap in Magento 2?

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > HTML Sitemap.

2. Select where to Display HTML Sitemap Link In — Top Links or Footer Links.

3. Choose where to Open Links — in a new tab or in the same tab.

4. Set up links for CMS Pages, Products, Categories, Blog Posts, and Categories. All of the pages have the same configurations.

• Enable the Display Product Links option to add the page links to the Magento HTML sitemap.
• Specify the Block Title that will be displayed on the sitemap page.
• Set the

Magento 2 recently viewed products and Magento compare products are the default features of the platform. They allow you to use widgets to display products customers have recently viewed or compared.

Your customers don't have to spend time going through the catalogue looking for the products they liked on their last visit. Once they come back to your website, these products will be waiting for them.

Before adding the recently viewed and compared products to any of your Magento 2 store pages you need to go through the list of general options.

Configure Magento 2 Recently Viewed/Compared Products

Follow these steps to configure the Magento 2 recently viewed and compared products:

1. Go to Stores > Configuration > Catalog > Catalog and unfold the Recently Viewed/Compared Products section.
2. Choose whether to Synchronize widget products with backend storage.
3. Decide if you want

Categories in Magento are one of the ways to improve navigation and help customers find relevant items faster. Although it's relatively easy to , it's not so easy to manage. 

After you create categories, you need to add products to them manually. It's a long process, especially if you have a lot of categories to group products by. But not for the Extension.

Today we'll prove it to you and create multiple categories in Magento automatically, from scratch. Moreover, these categories will already have products added to them. All you need is a few simple options.

Step 1: Set Basic Rule Information

To start creating your categories navigate to Catalog > Dynamic Category > Rules and press the Add New Rule button.

Here, enable the rule, give it a Name and a Description, and set a Priority. The latter defines how the rule will be processed. The higher the number the later it will be applied.

Step 2: Define the Pattern

First, choose Pattern as a category Type. Then select a Parent Category

One of the most important things customers are extremely cautious about when shopping online is their personal data. That's why there is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) required by the government to ensure this data is stored, managed, and processed in compliance with the customer's rights.

However, this regulation doesn't only protect your customers' interests. It makes your store protected too. Being protects your store from penalties and lawsuits for inappropriate data processing.

That's why today we'll discuss the best GDPR Extension for Magento 2 that will help you to provide your customers with more control over the data their share with you.

Let's dive in.

Top Magento 2 GDPR Extensions

Vendor	Extension Name	Price	Guarantees	Rating
	Magento 2 GDPR Extension by Plumrocket	$199.00	100% Open Code 60 Days Refund Policy 1 Year of Free Updates 1 Year of Free Support	4.9 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 15 reviews
	GDPR for Magento 2 by Mirasvit	$219.00	100% Open Code 30 Days Refund Policy 1 Year Free

group products that share similar qualities or attributes. They logically structure your website and make it easier to navigate through.

Online shops are ever-changing so categories are rarely static. You may need to enable, disable, hide, or regroup them to keep data relevant.

This is exactly what we'll cover in this guide. You'll learn how to hide categories in Magento 2 using different methods effectively.

How to Hide Empty Categories in Magento 2?

Empty categories do no good and make the customer journey quite abrupt. This is one of the most common reasons for hiding them.

At the same time, it's difficult to monitor such categories manually, especially if you have many products. There's not much you can do by default.

Yet, the  has a more feasible option.

It allows you to hide empty categories automatically in a few easy steps. To do so:

1. Navigate to Catalog > Categories and select the category you want to hide automatically.

2. Unfold the Dynamic Category section and enable the

Rich snippets structured data is a small piece of code that drives traffic to your website and increases the click through rates. It is important for Magento stores since it generates more targeted traffic and increases revenue correspondingly.

To add rich snippets to Magento pages, you have to go through a lot of templates and code editing which is not an option for non-developers.

In this article, we'll cover how to add the most with a few admin panel configurations. For that, you'll need a handy Magento 2 Rich Snippets Extension.

Once you install the extension, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Rich Snippets and you're good to start.

To add rich snippets to Magento 2 pages:

1. Configure Product Rich Snippet

• Select the Description Attribute.
• Choose whether you want to display Price including or excluding tax.
• Set the Brand Attribute and select the SKU Attribute.
• Specify the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN).
• Choose whether to Include Reviews and set the Number

If you decided to remove , 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 HTML Sitemap extension has been installed in.

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

app/code/Magefan/HtmlSitemap

then remove this folder.

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

vendor/magefan/module-html-sitemap

then run composer CLI command to remove it

composer remove magefan/module-html-sitemap

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! This will clean all HTML Sitemap extension configurations.

1. Just in case please make a full backup (dump)

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

Update using composer

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

composer remove magefan/module-html-sitemap
composer require magefan/module-html-sitemap ^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 HTML Sitemap module was installed via FTP (check if app/code/Magefan/HtmlSitemap folder exists), then follow these commands:

1. Download the latest version of the HTML Sitemap extension archive from magefan.com.

2.

You can install 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 HTML Sitemap 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

If you decided to remove , 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 Rich Snippets extension has been installed in.

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

app/code/Magefan/RichSnippets

then remove this folder.

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

vendor/magefan/module-rich-snippets

then run composer CLI command to remove it

composer remove magefan/module-rich-snippets

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! This will clean all Rich Snippets extension configurations.

1. Just in case please make a full backup

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

Update using composer

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

composer remove magefan/module-rich-snippets
composer require magefan/module-rich-snippets ^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 Rich Snippets module was installed via FTP (check if app/code/Magefan/RichSnippets folder exists), then follow these commands:

1. Download the latest version of the Rich Snippets extension archive from magefan.com.

You can install 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 Rich Snippets 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

If you decided to remove , 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 SEO extension has been installed in.

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

app/code/Magefan/Seo
app/code/Magefan/SeoPlus
app/code/Magefan/SeoExtra

then remove this folder.

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

vendor/magefan/module-seo

then run composer CLI command to remove it

composer remove magefan/module-seo*

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! This will clean all SEO configurations.

1. Just in case please make a full backup (dump)

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

Update using composer

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

composer remove magefan/module-NAME
composer require magefan/module-NAME ^x.x.x
# replace NAME with:
# seo - for Basic plan
# seo-plus - for Plus plan
# seo-extra - for Extra plan
# 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 SEO module was installed via FTP (check if app/code/Magefan/Seo folder exists), then follow these commands:

1. Download the latest version of the SEO extension archive from magefan.com.