Page 4 - Magento Blog, Insights and Tips

Website speed is not something one can optimize once, and benefit from ever after. You continuously have to improve the loading speed, especially when working with Magento 2 and eCommerce in general. 

Magento full-page cache is one of the reasons why your website loads faster. However, your store data always gets cleared for numerous reasons. And that's when you need a tool to automate the cache warming, so your customers and Google get relevant content faster.

You're going to find multiple Full Page Cache Warmer Extensions for Magento 2 on the web. Unfortunately, only a few provide really useful features.  So, in this article, we provide an overview of the best Magento 2 Full Page Cache Warmer extensions you can choose for your store.

Let's start!

Top Magento 2 Full Page Cache Warmer Extensions

Vendor	Extension Name	Price	Guarantees	Rating
	Magento 2 Full Page Cache Warmer	$179.00	100% Open Code 30 Days Money Back Policy 365 Days Free Support 365 Days Free Updates	5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 210 reviews

Different admin users are responsible for different sections of your store. Some fulfil orders, some manage products while others create content. Thus, it's hard to keep track of all changes made in the admin panel. This usually leads to mistakes you can't undo or threatens your store security. 

Magento 2 Admin Action Log Extension fixes that. It helps you log admin panel activity and monitor every change made to products, categories, blogs, orders or any other part of your admin. 

So today you'll learn how to do that. 

To track admin user actions in Magento 2: 

1. Install the Magento 2 Admin Action Log extension and enable it under Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Admin Activity Log.

2. Configure it by enabling the admin activity log and setting the storage time.

3. Navigate to System > Admin Activity Log > Activity Log to view changes made by admin users. 

The Admin Action Log Extension stores all view, create, delete and edit actions your admins take. 

You can

Although Adobe does its best to improve Magento security with each release, it's hard to avoid brute force attacks and other malicious actions entirely. However, there's something you can still do. 

Since a majority of attacks are focused on the admin panel, you need to track the login activity very thoroughly. So, you can identify where and whom the login attempt comes from. That's what the Magento 2 Admin Action Log extension helps with. 

To track login attempts in Magento 2: 

1. Install the Magento 2 Admin Action Log extension and navigate to the Admin Action Log configuration through Stores > Configuration > Admin Activity Log > Admin Login. 

2. Enable the login log and navigate to System > Admin Activity Log > Login Log to find all login attempts for a certain period. 

Additionally, you can filter through the login attempts using filters: 

• Date — date and time when the login attempt occurred
• Adin User — the login ID of the admin user
• IP address  and Location — the computer

Once you install the Magento 2 Admin Action Log extension in your store, you can keep track of all admin activities: changes and login attempts. All these details help you to maintain a safer environment and always be aware of what is being changed in your store. 

In this guide though, you'll learn how to configure and manage the extension. 

To configure the Magento 2 Admin Action Log, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions and find a corresponding extension. Then enable it. 

General Settings

Once you enable the Activity and Login Logs you can define the Lifetime (in days) for them. It specifies for how long to store the log. The default value is 90 days, but you can change that to save the resources. 

However, there are some additional options for both logs.

If you want to track some specific sections of the admin panel, you can choose them in the Log Modules section.

Then if you want to receive notices about the last admin's login time and IP, enable a corresponding

As you run your online store, you might frequently tweak the strategies or tactics to see which one receives better feedback. For that, you track the eCommerce events in your store. From viewing product pages to adding items to a cart, you get insights into crucial aspects.

When asked what tracking tool you use, the majority would probably say Google Analytics. It is indeed an efficient solution, but the numbers speak louder than words sometimes. So today we'll look through the 25+ Google Analytics statistics and see what all the fuss is about.

Ready to get started?

What is Google Analytics 4 and Why is it Important?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a profound analytics service that creates reports on website traffic, customer behaviour and overall website activities. This gives you a clear picture of your website performance. So you can rethink your strategy or tweak it for better results and experience.

With the reports Google Analytics 4 provides, you can plan your marketing campaigns based

Customer segmentation helps merchants and marketers discover behaviour patterns, improve shopping experience and cater to customers' unique needs. However, once you create customer groups in Magento, you might discover that restricting certain content from different customer groups benefits as well. 

Thus, in this guide, you'll learn about Magento 2 customer restrictions and how to impose them on different sections of your store. This allows you to take customer experience to an entirely new level and improve sales correspondingly. 

Should we start?

Restrictions for CMS Pages and Blocks

Different customers have different needs. To cover all of them, you need to provide personalized content, which is realised through CMS blocks and pages in Magento. 

Thus, if you use certain pages or blocks to promote loyalty programs, share some news or for any other purpose, you can restrict them for different customer groups. 

For that, you need to create CMS display rules and specify what customer

Readers pay attention to your blog's design before they even read the content. Thus, you need to focus on making it straightforward and easy to browse through.

Even though the Magento 2 Blog extension inherits your theme's styles, you may need to change some things, e.g. link colours, font size, font styles, etc. In most cases, this requires deep code editing. But there is an easier way.

You can add custom CSS in the Magento 2 blog right in the admin panel. No tedious code digging is required.

Let's, for example, see how we can change the colour of the blog post title.

To add custom CSS in Magento 2 Blog:

1. Navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Blog > Developer > CSS Settings.

2. Choose Yes to include blog CSS on all pages and add your Custom CSS code in the corresponding field.

Once the custom CSS is added, Save

To start selling on Google, you need to set up a Google Merchant Account, create a product feed and submit it to Google. Sounds too simple? Well, that's if we put it shortly. There are a lot of requirements you need to comply with so Google accepts your products. 

However today we'll focus on the final step — submitting a product feed to Google Merchant Center. There are two most popular ways to do that, and we'll cover each in more detail.

If you use Magento jump to the bottom of the article to find a ready-made solution on how to create Google Shopping Feed for Magento. 

Submit Product Feed to Google Merchant Center via a File URL

This method is best if you have hundreds or thousands of products which you update often.

To upload your products to Google Merchant Center this way you should have a URL that contains your product feed file. It usually comes from Google Sheets or some third-party tool. 

1. Log in to your Google Merchant Center Account and go to Products > All Products.

If you compare the XML sitemap and Google Indexing API, you'll definitely see the perks of the latter. The API helps to bypass the crawling queue by sending the page content directly to Google. So, the pages are indexed faster.

However, there's still a downside — a daily limit of 200 requests which includes both updated and deleted pages.

Thus, larger websites that update and publish loads of content daily might need to increase Google Indexing API requests or quota per day. And that's what you'll learn today. 

How to Increase Google Indexing API Quota?

1. Navigate to the Google API Console and move to the Quotas & System Limits tab. 

2. Tick the quota you'd like to increase (it's Publish

Keeping your blog active and relevant is quite a task. Thus, you may often need to disable some posts or update URLs. But here is the twist: your customers will get 404 error pages if you don't redirect customers from the old URLs. Needless to say, it harms both the user experience and your SEO efforts.

Thus, you must create 301 redirects to ensure a smooth ride. Today, you'll find out how to create automatic blog URL redirects in the Magento 2 Blog extension. 

Auto Redirects for Deleted/Disabled Entities

In the Magento 2 Blog, the 301 redirects for deleted or disabled blog entities are created automatically. You get this functionality out of the box and don't have to take any extra steps to set it up manually. 

The readers are redirected in the following way:

• Blog author > blog index page
• Blog tag > blog index page
• Blog post > blog index page

Auto Redirects for Changed Blog URLs

When you change some blog entity URL, the process of creating an automatic redirect is slightly different.

One of the most important aspects of any business is customer service. High-quality products matter a lot, and so does the ability to communicate with your customers effectively. If you can cater to your clients' needs and solve their requests promptly, you establish yourself as a brand people can trust. 

You can assist your customers in different ways depending on your business type. Now, it's easier than ever given the number of available Shopify apps. But there are two sides of the same coin. What option exactly will be the one?

We know how overwhelming such choices can be. Thus, to give you a hand, we prepared a list of the best Shopify customer support apps that cover diverse aspects of customer service.

Let's get right to them!

Top Customer Support Apps for Shopify

Icon	App name	Developer	Price	Free plan	Free trial
	Login As Customer	Magefan	Standard - $19/month Pro - $39/month
	Hulk Form Builder	HulkApps.com	Pro Plan - $9.90/month Pro+ Plan - $19.90/month New Global Plan - $299/month

February 24, 2022 marks 2 years or 731 days of full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine…

However, the russian hybrid war began 10 years ago on February 20, 2014. It all started with the Crimea occupation by russia in 2014. Then the russian army invaded other parts of Ukraine - Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

Today, we’d like to remind ourselves and the world: why our lives have split into “before” and “after” since February 24, 2022.

We understand that the world news has slightly switched from the russian full-scale war in Ukraine to other important topics. However, the war in Ukraine is still not over...

Our day doesn't begin with a cup of coffee or tea. Every day begins with reading news of the latest missile attacks and how many people died (these attacks have been ongoing from day one of this war). 

Every day at 9 a.m. we have a moment of silence to commemorate those who have been killed in the russian war against Ukraine.

In this article, we recalled the biggest, heartbreaking events

Blog post short content is the first few sentences or a quick summary of the post displayed on the post list. In other words, it is a text you can see on the blog homepage, category and any other post list pages.

In Magefan Shopify Blog App you can easily configure the length of the short content, and the blog templates with the short content. Today, you'll learn more about it.

How to Manage the Length of the Short Content?

While short content should give your reader a glimpse at the post content, it shouldn't be too long. That's why it's important to keep it relatively short. 

To configure short content in Shopify blog:

1. Navigate to Apps > Magefan Blog > Configuration and find the Post List section.

2. Specify the Default Short Content Length (in characters) and set the Short Content End Characters. It will be displayed in case you exceed the length of the short content. 

Once you Save the settings, your posts' short content will be aligned with them on the frontend. 

How to Set

If you have a website, especially in eCommerce, you know how important it is to track important eCommerce events. It helps to improve your marketing, sales and content strategies as well as get feedback on what works and what doesn't.  So the ultimate question is not about whether to track data or not, but rather how to track it: client-side or server-side.

While most websites use client-side tracking, server-side can also bring a lot of benefits to the table. So today we'll discuss both tracking methods to help you determine which one fits your needs best.

Those of you who use Magento as an eCommerce platform will also find a ready-to-use solution for client-side and server-side tracking. So stick around.

Same as always, before we determine the similarities and differences of both tracking methods, let's talk about them first.

What is Client-Side Tracking?

Client-side tracking is the process of tracking users' actions on your website and sending data from users' browsers to the tag

Google has become more sophisticated in ranking the most useful and user-friendly pages. But that's not the only thing. The way pages get into Google Index is changing too. That's when XML sitemap and Google Indexing API come into play.

Should you rely on the standard crawling or request indexing through API? Today you stop wondering which option is best for your ranking and SEO in general. 

We'll compare the XML sitemap and Google Indexing API to determine if you need both for your website. 

As usual, before we get to the main part, let's define what these concepts are.

What is XML Sitemap?

XML sitemap is a file where you include information about the pages, videos and other files on your website and the relationships between them. This file tells Google which pages are important on your website and which ones you want indexed. Google then uses the sitemap to crawl your pages and add them to the index. 

Before you ask, Google can discover your pages through internal and external linking.

A blog is an effective solution to maintain your online presence and attract more visitors. Yet, to keep readers engaged, you should also implement blog comments. Comments help you deliver to people's needs better.

What also matters is the option to reply to blog comments in Shopify. Of course, you can do it on the Shopify storefront. But it would be more convenient to reply to blog comments without having to leave the admin panel, right?

That's exactly what the Magefan Blog App offers. It comes with three types of comments, where you have the comment reply option in Magefan Comments.

To reply to blog comments in the Shopify:

1. Navigate to Apps > Magefan Blog > Comments.

2. Open a comment you'd like to reply to and press the Reply button.

3. Type your reply in the corresponding field and Save changes.

Now you can see your reply on the storefront:

These are all the steps you need to take to reply to blog comments in Shopify. Everything is done in a few clicks. But that's not it. To operate

Millions of people go through millions of pages they find on Google daily. If you want your Magento website to be within that number and get discovered by potential customers, you need to get into the Google index. Otherwise, your chances of getting organic traffic range from zero to none, which is basically the same thing.

To get Google to index your website you need to know how the index works and how to submit a page to Google. So, today we'll cover this along with the most common reasons why Google doesn't index your website and how to fix that. 

Don't get overwhelmed just yet. It is actually not that hard to grasp the concepts of the Google indexing process. We promise.

Warning: we'll start from the basics. So if you've already generated a sitemap for your Magento store, just move to the other sections. 

How Google Finds Your Content?

Before you learn how to get Google to index your website, you need to know how the index works in the first place. The process comes down to 4 steps,

Getting indexed by Google fast is an opportunity not many websites are exposed to since the majority of them rely on a sitemap. The XML sitemap does help Google discover your pages, but it is not fast enough to display relevant changes in search. 

Thus, if you want to see your changes reflected in Google search results almost instantly, you need Google Indexing API. It is a speedier and more direct approach to indexing that outperforms standard crawling. 

While it is relatively hard to set up, you can still do it by using the Magento 2 Google Indexing API Extension. In this guide, though, you'll learn all about the prerequisites of the Indexing API and how to set it up for Magento.

Before we dive deeper into the topic, let's define what is Google Indexing API. 

What is Google Indexing API?

Google Indexing API is a powerful tool that allows you to notify Google when pages on your website are added, updated or removed. Correspondingly, Google schedules a fresh crawl each time you make

Hi, the Magefan customers and welcome the newbies of our Magefan blog, 

We're happy to share our latest news and product updates of this January. Since we've already published January updates at the beginning of the month, we're happy to share another portion of the product releases our team has been working on this month.

Magento 2 Google Tag Manager Extension

New features of Magento Google Tag Manager!

Features:

• Added compatibility with the Google Tag Manager Server Container (GTM Extra).
• Option to use GTM Server Container or GA4 Measurement Protocol to track only missing purchase transactions (GTM Extra).
• Option to define Google Ads Tag ID (GTM Plus).
• Code Refactor.

The latest available version is v 2.5.0

Request a FREE trial

Magento 2 POS

New features of Magento 2 POS | Point of Sale System!

Features:

• Simplified the installation process for the POS system, eliminating the need for "pos" in the "pub" folder.
• Enhanced cash operations functionality, requiring comments for taking

Once you configure the Magento XML sitemap, you might wonder whether you need indexing API too. The answer is Yes if you want more control over what gets indexed and when. But where do you start?

You can delve into the technical part and spend hours starting the implementation or configure the Magento 2 Google Indexing API extension. 

Today, we'll talk about the latter since it is way easier to use the indexing API in Magento this way.  

Once you install the Magento Google Indexing API module, navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Google Indexing. Then, enable the extension and continue with the other settings.

Indexing Delay

If you decide to send Google indexing requests automatically or manually, note that they are sent immediately.

However, what if you decide to promptly change something else on the page and something else after that? It will create too many unnecessary requests to Google.

To avoid this, set the Indexing Delay (in minutes) to delay the request,

Satisfying your customers' needs is a demanding task, especially when the items you sell on Shopify come in different sizes. It's frustrating when the long-awaited item doesn't fit, don't you agree? Thus, getting into a cycle of constant returns and unsatisfied shoppers, you lose more than you gain.

The best solution? Provide clear sizing guides for people to be confident in their choices. But here comes the next dilemma — what Shopify app to go for?

With all the available options out there, you may find it difficult to settle for one. So, we prepared a list of the best Shopify size chart apps for you to find a perfect match.

Let's see what these options offer, shall we?

Top Size Chart Apps for Shopify

Icon	App name	Developer	Price	Free plan	Free trial
	Size Chart - Magefan	Magefan	Standard - $4.99/month Pro - $9.99/month
	Kiwi Size Chart & Recommender	Staytuned	Premium - $6.99/month Plus - $12.49/month Ultimate - $24.49/month
	BF Size Chart & Size Guide	Relentless Apps	Premium - $5.99/month