Yoast SEO – 404 Site map – Common Issue

I have seen many people having this issue and asking for help on forums. It is a really common issue and can be fixed within 3 or 4 clicks.

The Yoast SEO extension for WordPress is no question, one of the best extensions available. It can help you improve the SEO value of your content whilst generating XML site maps for search engines such as Google.

Once installed, many people have the issue that their site map is showing a 404 when they try to access it.

Resolving Yoast SEO 404 Site map

Navigate to:

WordPress Admin -> Settings -> Permalinks

The next stage is simple, just scroll down and save your preferences, without any changes.

This will generate the new site map & resolve this issue 99% of the time.

Recently there has been an increase in brute-force password guessing attacks,

This has effected a large portion of Magento installations. These attacks have allowed unauthorized admin panel access.
Magento recently came out with a few steps you can take to help protect your store against these kinds of attacks.

The earlier versions of Magento 1 are the most at risk. (Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14.2 Etc),
“locations”/”admin”/”down-loader” all need to be guarded on these early versions.
In the case of Magento 2, only the admin panel could possibly be effected and needs to be protected.

Listed below are a few steps you should take to ensure your site security.
Make sure your password and those of your employee’s using the admin panel are strong.
Keep in mind that longer, complicated passwords are harder to for hackers to guess or bruteforce.
-Best Practice’s Pro Tip (“Password’s should be updated every 2-3 months to ensure your site security.”)

Look over all admin users in System→Permissions→Users. Religiously remove any employees that no longer work for you from admin access, as well as any admins that are unknown to you.
Make sure your password and the password of all the other employee’s using the admin panel are strong: utilizing numbers, letters, and capitals as well as special characters can drastically improve your site’s security. Longer, complicated passwords are harder to guess.
Your admin user-name should be something unusual and original– dont use admin or administrator.
It is very important to also ensure that all available patches are installed as these help protect you from known security issues within the magneto software.

IP Whitelisting

Another great way protect access to your administrator panel is set access for user only coming from a IP address or network that you trust. E.g your office or home office, that uses the same location and computer or computers every time. (This strategy will not work efficiently if your IP address is dynamic or if your or if your company utilizes a remote workforce.)

(Do it yourself information coming up)

If You Are Using An Nginx Web Server

In most cases you will need your hosting provider to block the admin down-loader and rss access locations. If you have all access to your server, you can modify the Nginx configuration yourself, following these instructions as were posted at HTTPS://WWW.NGINX.COM/RESOURCES/ADMIN-GUIDE/RESTRICTING-ACCESS/

IP WHITE-LISTING THE ADMIN PANEL AND RSS FEEDS

The admin panel is reachable through /admin/index.php/admin URLs (or custom paths that you assigned).
The way to protect an admin panel and RSS feed is to redirect any requests coming from unknown IP. This can be done by editing the .htaccess the Magento root folder and add the following code right after the rewrite rules for mobile user agents.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/ADMIN_PANEL_LOCATION [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/DOWNLOADER [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/RSS/CATALOG [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/RSS/ORDER [NC]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^1.2.3.4
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^5.6.7.8
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/ [R=302,L]
Fail2Ban Adaptive Filtering


Change Location of Admin Panel and Magento Connect Manager

Password attacks assume typical admin panel locations like /admin, /backend, /manage, /control and similar as the default location of Magento Connect Manager. Shifting the location of your admin panel’s and downloader can bring down the likelihood of being targeted by generic attacks.This does not protect against targeted attacks as attackers may try to guess the location with many requests.
Change the Name of the Admin Panel (Magento 1 Only)
Changing the name of the admin panel can help to protect it from attacks. To change the name, log into the admin panel and steer to System -> Cache Management.

Long gone are the days where you can simply type up any type of randomness and expect  interaction. I have witnessed people going crazy whenever a social media platform changes their algorithm because they now feel like they will not be seen. Whilst this is partially true, no matter how many algorithm changes a social media platform makes, if your content is good, your ideal clients will be looking for you.

Let me just add that no matter how great your content is, social media should not be your only form of keeping in touch with your clients. If you do not already, I advice that you start a mailing list immediately. You have to remember that no matter how much effort you place into your social media strategy, if a platform decided to shut down, it’s bye bye to your followers. Having your own mailing list ensures that no matter what, you do not lose contact with your clients. It ensures that you can keep communications consistent, no matter what happens to third party platforms.

Creating content for your business is not as simple as writing a post about why a client should buy your product or service. The way people think is changing and your strategy needs to keep up with the changes. Clients no longer purchase products or service; they purchase the effects of having this product or service in their lives. ‘Buy me’ is no longer incentive enough to get somebody to buy. When populating content, you need to ensure that your content strategy is in line with your business vision and goals.

Before creating a content strategy, define your core goals for the company. What are they? Who are you trying to reach? Once you established this, you can determine what themes your content should have. For instance, you could be a florist trying to engage more customers online. You know that your sales are highest during Mother’s Day and Valentines Day. You therefore know that in the months of February and March, your content will be around these topics.

Once you have decided on themes, you can then break down the theme into content types. No matter whether you have a product based or service based business. You have to remember that hundreds of million of people use social media platforms to stay in touch with friends, family and businesses. In order to stand out, you need to ensure that you put in the work to stand out and create epic content that will attract repeat viewers.

I suggest having the following types of contents in order to gain maximum engagement.

Entertaining content

Clients do not always want to see what you have to offer. Create entertaining content such as quizzes, games, competitions or share viral content to engage your customers. You can test different types of engaging content to see which type your clients like the most and do more of that in the future. You will not get it right the first time. You just have to learn what makes them engage with you the most.

Inspirational content

Everybody loves a bit of inspiration. Share thought provoking content. People love quotes and success stories. Be their source of daily inspiration and clients are likely to view your profile each day because they are gaining something positive from you.

Conversational content

Create content that requires a response from your audience. You can show customers a behind the scenes footage and ask for their opinion which will encourage them to comment with their feedback. Platforms such a Periscope allows you to record live and receive feedback from your viewers immediately, creating a live Q&A environment. You can also get the same results from Webinars. If you are not keen on using video as part of your social media strategy, you can also use things such as case studies allowing people to comment on the outcome of the case study.

Educational content

We live in a day and age where people are moving away from the traditional University learning and instead are increasingly using online resources to educate themselves. If you are share good content that allows your consumers to take action, you can position yourself as a leader in your niche. Sharing infographics, ebooks or articles is a great way to educate your readers.. The information you share had to be good and not full of filler text. We all know that the power of word of mouth is huge, if you have share worthy content, the more chances of people sharing your content and the potential of going viral.

Convincing content

People are more likely to purchase if they see how others have benefited from products and services. You can use follow up emails to encourage consumers to leave reviews about the product or service they have received. Sending automated emails is a great strategy to ensure that you do not have to manually send out emails, which can free up time to work on something else in the business. Follow up emails are not only a good way to collect feedback for new customers to view, but it is also a great way to improve your customer service within your business.

It can seem hard staying on top of all of this but if you prepare in advance, you can handle multiple social media platforms with ease. Create a social media planner for each platform you choose to start with. Plan out your content with your team in advance. Planning out in advance gives you a chance to work around holidays and create content to cover any holidays if no one is going to be around to manually manage the platform.

Even with a content schedule, creating a strategy has to be done on a regular basis and you need to be consistent to see any results. if you feel that you need to adapt a social media strategy in your business model, you can view our services page to see how we can move your business forward and develop a strategy to increase your reach.

Magento Conditional Statement – on Website / Store View

Magento is one of the most versatile and feature rich e-commerce platforms available with the ability to manage multiple websites under 1 installation, yet it has a very complex programming structure and sometimes you need to think outside of the box to avoid creating a large amount of unnecessary work for yourself.

Recently one of my clients required Adwords conversion tracking to be set up for his Magento multi-store. The only issue is that this client is running the same template (with an alternative skin) on both of these websites.

The challenge was to call the correct conversion code for each website without creating another child theme. I achieved this by using a PHP conditional statement using the website / store view code.

Store View

Using your Store ID

<?php if (Mage::app()->getStore()->getId() == 'StoreID'){ ?>
//Insert required HTML, PHP or JS here
<?php } else { ?>
//Insert required HTML, PHP or JS here
<?php } ?>

Using your Store Code

<?php if (Mage::app()->getStore()->getCode() == 'yourStoreCode'){ ?>
//Insert required HTML, PHP or JS here
<?php } else { ?>
//Insert required HTML, PHP or JS here
<?php } ?>

Website View

Using your Website ID

<?php if (Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getId() == 'yourWebsiteID'){ ?>
//HTML or JS Code Here
<?php } else { ?>
//HTML or JS Code Here
<?php } ?>

Using your Website Code

<?php if (Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getCode() == 'yourWebsiteCode'){ ?>
//HTML or JS Code Here
<?php } else { ?>
//HTML or JS Code Here
<?php } ?>

Getting your Store/Website – Code or ID

From the Magento Dashboard, navigate to:
System > Manage Stores
Under ‘Website Name’ column, click your website or store name.
Get the website value in ‘Code*’ field

Magento Product Relations

Product relations are extremely important for any online catalog. They help customers navigate your products, increase conversion & increase average order value.

But which should you use? Up sell, cross sell or related product?

Here is my suggested use for each:

Related Products

Magento Related Products

With related products the customer is able to add multiple products to their cart from one product page by using a check box.

Typical use for related products, when your main product have a range of accessories or items which the customer will want to purchase together.

Up Sell Products

Magento Up sell Products

Up sell products disable a range of similar products on your product page. This will encourage the customer to view the other items you offer without having to navigate back to the category page.

This relation type works different to related products, once clicked the visitor is taken to another product page without the ability to add both products to the cart.

Typical use for up sell products, displaying similar items which your customer may be interested in instead of the current product.

Cross Sell Products

Magento Cross Sell Products

Cross sell products work in a slightly different way to the other 2 product relation types. Products that are set to cross sell will display on the cart page of the checkout process.

There are many uses for cross sell products, encourage impulse buying, offering promotional material such as free catalogues/brochures and clearance stock.

Setting Product Relations

Setting up cross sells, up sells & related products in Magento is an easy process but can be very time consuming depending on the size of your catalogue.

Each product relation is set in the same way.

Step 1

Navigate to the product edit screen in the Magento administration panel:

Catalog -> Manage Products -> “SELECT PRODUCT”

Step 2

Product Relations Admin

Choose your desired product relation type from the left hand panel.

Step 3

Now you must toggle the drop down which by default is set to “Yes”. This will have the following effect:

Yes – Will only display products which are already set to have the product relation with the current product.

No – Will only display products which do not have a product relation set with the current product.

Any – Will display all products no matter of set product relations.

After changing the toggle press the “Search” button to display results.

Step 4

Now set your product relations with the check box at the side of each product, once set click the “Save” button.

Final Notes

Setting product relations in your catalogue is extremely important, it can help increase visitor flow, conversion and total order value.

Although it can be time consuming when your store contains a large amount of products, I highly recommend taking the time to set these in your store.

The new banner slider that comes packaged with the release of Magento 1.9 and above is smooth and optimised, but offers little backend customisation.

The slide effect it uses may not suit your store. I was recently asked by a customer to change their banner slider to a fade transition in their 1.9 Magento.

The banner slider script packed with Magento 1.9 is actually easily customisation & simple to change the slider effect. Using a script called Cycle2 – by Malsup.

View more Cycle2 documentation.

How To Change Slider effect

1. Open:

skin/frontend/rwd/YOUR_THEME/js/slideshow.js

a. If this file does not exist make a copy from your rwd theme

skin/frontend/rwd/default/js/slideshow.js

(Creating a sub theme is recommended so any future upgrade of Magento does not overwrite your changes.)

2. You will see the following code

$j(document).ready(function () {

// ==============================================
// UI Pattern – Slideshow
// ==============================================

$j(‘.slideshow-container .slideshow’)
.cycle({
slides: ‘> li’,
pager: ‘.slideshow-pager’,
pagerTemplate: ”,
speed: 600,
pauseOnHover: true,
swipe: true,
prev: ‘.slideshow-prev’,
next: ‘.slideshow-next’,
fx: ‘scrollHorz’
});
});

3. Change ‘scrollHorz’ in fx.

‘fade’ = A smooth fade transition
‘scrollHorz’ = Smooth horizontal scroll

4. Save your edit & refresh your cache.

Add Custom Fields To Contact Form In Magento

Recently one of my customers required additional functionality which required me to add custom fields to their contact form. Although doing this requires more than back-end configuration, with the way Magento’s transactional emails work –  this job is achievable for people with low level developer skill.

Editing your Form.phtml

1.Firstly you are required to edit your form.phtml. This file controls your contact form. This file can be found at:

app/design/frontend/YOUR_THEME/YOUR_PACKAGE/template/contacts/form.phtml

If it isn’t, make a copy from your default/base theme so your changes aren’t overwritten with the next update.

2. Locate the following code:


<ul class="form-list">
<li class="fields">
<div class="field">
<label for="name" class="required"><em>*</em><?php echo Mage::helper('contacts')->__('Name') ?></label>
<div class="input-box">
<input name="name" id="name" title="<?php echo Mage::helper('contacts')->__('Name') ?>" value="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($this->helper('contacts')->getUserName()) ?>" class="input-text required-entry" type="text" />
</div>
</div>


3. Directly under enter the following code:

<li>
<label for="YOUR_FIELD"><?php echo Mage::helper('contacts')->__('YOUR_FIELD') ?></label>
<div class="input-box">
<input name="YOUR_FIELD" id="YOUR_FIELD" title="<?php echo Mage::helper('contacts')->__('YOUR_FIELD') ?>" value="" class="input-text" type="tel" />
</div>
</li>


Remember to replace all instances of “YOUR_FIELD” to the required field name.

Now save this field. We are finished with it.

Create A New Transactional Email

1. Firstly, in your Magento control panel navigate to:

System -> Transactional E-mails -> Add New Template

From here you will need to load the contact form template using the drop down.

2. You will see the following code


Name: {{var data.name}}
E-mail: {{var data.email}}
Telephone: {{var data.telephone}}
Comment: {{var data.comment}}


Make the additional of the following code:


Comment: {{var data.YOUR_FIELD}}


Remembering to replace “YOUR_FIELD” with the name chosen in the template file.

3. Now navigate to:

System -> Configuration -> Contacts -> Email Options

Set your “Email Template” to the newly created modified template.

4. Refresh your cache & test.

Magento Custom Contact Form Field

The default Magento 1.9 RWD theme is responsive, clean and offers a variety of features including product zoom & colour swatches, great out of the box or great to modify with CSS changes.

In this tutorial i will explain how to make simple design & CSS Changes which can include a change of background colour, font colour & styles. I will explain what is possible with use of custom CSS in an advanced tutorial at a later date.

Create a Sub Theme

Firstly it is important to create a sub theme for the RWD package, this will stop your custom changes getting overwritten in any future update of your store.

1. Navigate to:

skin/frontend/RWD/default/css/

Download both styles.css & madisonisland.css

2. Create a new directory

skin/frontend/RWD/YOUR_THEME/css/

3. Upload both of the downloaded CSS files to your new sub theme directory.

4. In your Magento admin panel navigate to:

System -> Configuration -> Design

5. Do not change the package name, leave this as RWD, but under “Theme” change “Skin (Images / CSS)” to YOUR_THEME.

Now you should be able to make changes to your new styles.css & madisonisland.css and your changes will not be overwritten when you next update/upgrade your Magento installation.

Using your browser inspector tool you can find the rule that applies to each block and the line it is on within the styles sheet. This will allow you to make simple changes to font & background colours amongst other things for advanced CSS users.

The default footer links are not always relevant or needed. Although it is not difficult to alter them, it is not possible without altering XML template files first.

This guide is for use on Magento 1.9.1

Change Default Footer Links

Editing your XML file

1.Find & open app/design/frontend/rwd/YOUR THEME/layout/page.xml

(If this does not exist make a copy
from rwd/default)

2.Locate the following code:

<block type="page/template_links" name="footer_links" as="footer_links" template="page/template/links.phtml">
<action method="setTitle"><title>Quick Links</title></action>
</block>
<block type="page/template_links" name="footer_links2" as="footer_links2" template="page/template/links.phtml">
<action method="setTitle"><title>Account</title></action>
</block>


3. Comment out this code with <!--          -->

4.Locate the following code:

<!--<block type="cms/block" name="footer_social_links">
<action method="setBlockId"><block_id>footer_social_links</block_id></action>
</block>-->


5. Remove the comments on this section. This will now activate the static block named footer_links_social in the backend.

6. Now refresh your cache.

Editing your static block

You should now be able to configure the links displayed in your footer via your Magento backend.

CMS -> Static Blocks -> footer_social_links

Use the following code as a template, it uses class names which use existing styling & social media sprites.

<div class="links">
<div class="block-title">
<strong><span>Company</span></strong>
</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/about-magento-demo-store/">About Us</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/contacts/">Contact Us</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/customer-service/">Customer Service</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/privacy-policy-cookie-restriction-mode/">Privacy Policy</a></li>
</ul>
</div><div class="links">
<div class="block-title"><strong><span>Quick Links</span></strong></div>
<ul>
<li class="first"><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/catalog/seo_sitemap/category/" title="Site Map">Site Map</a></li>
<li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/catalogsearch/term/popular/" title="Search Terms">Search Terms</a></li>
<li class=" last"><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/catalogsearch/advanced/" title="Advanced Search">Advanced Search</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="links">
<div class="block-title"><strong><span>Account</span></strong></div>
<ul>
<li class="first"><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/customer/account/" title="My Account">My Account</a></li>
<li class=" last"><a href="http://yourdomain.com/newstore/sales/guest/form/" title="Orders and Returns">Orders and Returns</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="links social-media">
<div class="block-title">
<strong><span>Connect With Us</span></strong>
</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="#"><em class="facebook"></em>Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href="#"><em class="twitter"></em>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="#"><em class="youtube"></em>YouTube</a></li>
<li><a href="#"><em class="pinterest"></em>Pinterest</a></li>
<li class="last"><a href="#"><em class="rss"></em>RSS</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Finally, ensure you clear your cache each time the footer static block is changed. It will be required for the changes to take effect on your store.

Magento 1.9 footer links