Greetings to the Magento Community
As some of you might have read, I’ve recently joined the Magento team as a Senior Product Manager. Anyone who knows me personally can tell you that I’m a big fan of Magento and that I’m passionate about creating great internet products. So you can imagine how excited I am to be doing what what I love for a company I admire. I’m now working to channel that passion into building great experiences for our users and our community.
The last couple weeks have been quite busy, and before I signed off to enjoy a relaxing weekend I wanted to introduce myself and let you know what I’ll be working on. So here goes…
Magento Connect
Our extension marketplace now offers over 1,700 extensions that are built and tested by hundreds of developers around the world. Magento Connect is growing...fast. Every day, thousands of users visit the marketplace to find solutions that will take their businesses to the next level. This growth has led to opportunities that we need to embrace and issues that we need to fix. A few of you might be aware of an effort underway (which we’ve dubbed internally as “Connect 2.0") to bring our marketplace to the next level. Now that I’m heading up Magento Connect, I’ll be sure to keep you updated on what changes to expect and how you can respond. I’d also recommend following our new Twitter account, @MagentoConnect to stay informed.
I want you to know that I’ll be managing the upcoming changes with great care. There are hundreds of developers around the world who depend on Magento Connect to literally keep the lights on. Any major changes need to be made with this reality in mind. I’ve personally called several developers in the USA and Europe to introduce myself and solicit feedback (survey data can only tell me so much). There is a lot of excitement out there, and I think our community will be very pleased with some of the updates we’ll make in the near future. I’ll be posting many blog entries about Magento Connect in the weeks and months ahead
Developer Community
Another initiative we have in place is to further empower and organize our community, which now numbers over 167,000 members across four continents. Magento’s vibrant community is part of what makes the company unique and there is a lot that can be done to build upon this momentum. A few near-term opportunities include clearer communication, on-demand training, and building processes that better enable our developers to improve our platform. Please reach out to me with your ideas about how to continue making Magento’s open-source community one of the most unique in the world.
Several “Top Secret” Initiatives
This year, Magento will be launching a few new products that our users are going to love. These products are in stealth mode right now so I can’t provide any details, but rest assured we’ll be updating you as they are released via the Magento Blog, our Twitter account, and our Newsletter. Be sure to stay tuned for more updates.
So, there it is, my first post to the Magento Blog! If you have any questions, you’re always free to contact me via email (tim -at- varien.com) or my personal twitter account. I’m looking forward to working with all of you in the future.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1 released
After nearly two years of development, we are proud to announce the release of the first alpha version of the Drupal 7.x family. This alpha includes a tremendous number of new features and new under-the-hood improvements for both users and developers.
We revamped Drupal's user interface, added key contributed modules including CCK and ImageField, introduced a new object-oriented database layer, revamped file handling capabilities, and an automated testing framework based on SimpleTest, among literally hundreds of other improvements. Drupal 7.0 alpha 1 is the collective work of over 800 core contributors.
It is important to note that this alpha version should not be used for production sites. We've resolved most errors reported so far, but there are outstanding known issues (including security issues) and most likely some problems that have not been reported as of yet. It is expected that there will be at least one more alpha version followed by a few beta versions and at least one release candidate before Drupal 7.0 is finalized. You can help us reach the final release date sooner by testing this alpha and providing feedback.
JConnect Rebranded
Do you remember the GSOC project JConnect on Joomla?. This multi-integration engine started out by connecting Joomla! with Elgg. If you are new to the project or forgot about it, see this page. Due to conflicting brand names, JConnect is now JConnekt; read the full story on the blog.
JConnekt BeginsThe project is as active as ever, and all the latest downloads and updates can be found at the newly established website, jconnekt.org.
Some of the changes in JConnekt's codebase compared to 'JConnect' as you used to know it are:
- Communication library replaced with a home cooked on for improving effiecient communication.
- A unique feature called Auto Active Single Sign On. (Google do this for sub domains ; But we do this for cross domains too)
- Wordpress integration is well underway and soon to be announced.
JConnekt is still in its infancy as both project and product. Any help with quality assurance will be most appreciated. Track issues, write usability reports, explain in full what features you need for your site. Simply put, JConnect, in the spirit of FOSS, needs a community.
Website : http://www.jconnekt.org
Ideally, by now everyone interested should start frequenting the new site, and rely on it to deliver all the latest JC news. To aid in the transition however there will be a couple more posts following this one, here at the Joomla Community Blogs, so stay tuned!
Rails 3 Bugmash
RailsBridge has organized a Rails 3 Bugmash on January 16th and 17th. The idea is to try and upgrade your apps and favourite plugins/gems to work with Rails 3 and make the upgrade path as smooth as possible for everyone else by documenting the process and fixing the bugs you encounter. Rails core team and others will be around in #railsbridge to help out the participants during the bugmash. Check the RailsBridge announcement for more details.
theClassWatch: Magento and Adobe Scene 7 Integration
Scene7 is a popular document hosting and interactive publishing service which offers a service that allow online shoppers to interact with the products they are looking to purchase. Some of Scene7’s technology is groundbreaking in how it allows customers to easily configure and customize a potential purchase and in doing so really enhances the online shopping experience from the customer’s perspective.
Elias Interactive was recently part of a project that helped integrate Magento and Scene7 for theClassWatch and put together a great video case study. Elias is also doing a series of technical posts on the integration and you can read the first part right here.
Do you have a site that was built incorporating some awesome integration? Let us know. Sound off in the comments and you could just find your site featured right here on the Magento blog.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
The TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library - Powered by Drupal
The TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library is an open source project developing a free virtual appliance library that pre-integrates the very best server-oriented open source software. TurnKey Linux appliances are simple, ready-to-use servers that are designed to "just work" and can be deployed in minutes on a virtual machine, bare metal or in the cloud.
The purpose of this case study is to discuss our experience using Drupal to implement TurnKey's web site.
Vulnerable Extension List Rss Feed Launched
The Vulnerable Extension List team would like to announce the availability of the test RSS feed for the vulnerable extension list.
To enable this feed, either place the dedicated url
http://feeds.joomla.org/JoomlaSecurityVulnerableExtensions
Here are two examples of how to use the feed.
When placed in a news feed module on your website front end to produce a list like this
If you wish to place it in the administrator cpanel position then it will display in the following format.
The feed will be changed per month to highlight the latest items. If you wish to comment, or have any questions then please see this topic within the security forum
Thank you
Magento and Pod1 UK eCommerce Forum
On January12th members of the Magento Team and UK Magento Enterprise Partners Pod1 hosted a forum attended by a group of people who influence the eCommerce decisions of many of the UK’s leading retailers. The meeting was organised to help in the exchange of knowledge and ideas about what UK retailers are looking for from an eCommerce platform, how Magento might meet their needs, and the potential obstacles to Magento’s uptake.
What are retailers in the UK looking for in an eCommerce platform? How are they planning to establish or enhance their online channels?
For many retailers, it’s clear that the eCommerce team is small and busy, which has high targets and high expectations set for it. Any eCommerce platform needs to help the team do complex, powerful things with ease.
Mark Hopwood of Pod1 did a great write up of the get together and you can read it all here.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
Adding Custom MapBox Tiles to Google Maps in Ten Minutes
Beautiful custom maps and step by steps instructions on how to add them to your site
You can create custom maps for your website in ten minutes or less by combining Google Maps with MapBox. Adding custom maps to your site can allow you to easily make your maps stand out and really accentuate the data they're depicting, and in the case of existing Google Maps integrated into a site, it can give them a quick facelift. MapBox's tiles include both completely custom base layer map types as well as custom overlay tiles that sit on top of a base layer map, and you can add either or both to Google Maps. To give it a try, check out the step by step instructions on how to add MapBox tiles to Google Maps on MapBox.com.
With some recent work that Tom and I did to integrate MapBox with the Google Maps API, it's now much easier to use the two services together on Drupal websites. This functionality is supported by the Gmap module, which now lives in the MapBox module. You can read more about using the GMap module and MapBox on Drupal sites here. The rest of this post discusses how MapBox and the Google Maps API work together, in general.
In terms of custom base layer tiles, when you implement a Google Map on your website, Google offers a handful of "Map Types" that include the default map you see on Maps.Google.com as well as terrain, satellite, and even different Mars and moon tiles. MapBox also offers "Map Types" like the DC Nightvision view or World Print tiles. Combine this with the Google Map API's ability to implement third party "Custom Map Types" and you've got MapBox tiles showing up in your traditional Google Maps.
As for custom tile overlays, the Google API offers the ability to place transparent overlays on top of base layer maps. Using MapBox you can make the "World Print" your default base layer, set the center and zoom on top of Baltimore, and then add the transparent U.S. Congressional Districts custom overlay on top of the map. Below is a look at what that looks like in action.
U.S. Congressional Districts
div.prose img {border:0px;}div.node-body div#map a, div.node-body div#map2 a, div.node-body div#map3 a {border-bottom:0px !important;color:#666;}Trending Topics
Even if the use of alliteration for the topic of this blog post doesn't excite you, the newly created forum: Trending Topics might. It's kind of an experiment, based on the input from others of course. Sorry if it doesn't work out, but I'm putting my reputation on the line hoping it will.
Initially only 'Trender Tenders' will be able to start new topics, but anyone who is a registered member will be able to reply to them. We hope this will maintain a little bit of order and good results will come out of this forum as a result. Give us a few days to post a sticky and generally consolidate things before we invite you all to jump in.
BTW this idea sprang from the suggestions of Jacques here, so guess who's our first 'Trender Tender' now?
Stay tuned to see how this all works out. :)
Edit: You can comment below, or even better, discuss this here.
New User Panel for all Networked Workspaces
Until today only administrators could see who is on a workspace, and what permission level each user has. It’s pretty difficult to work on collaborative projects when you can’t see who’s on your team! With the new user panel all users can see who is on the workspace and what workspace-wide permission level they have. Administrators can access the users panel from workspace settings, all other users will see a link in the top right of their workspace. Here are three reasons why we love this feature:
- Now you can quickly find your coworkers email and check out their latest status update
- Better understand exactly what your clients can see by checking their workspace-wide permission level
- Sort by name, permission level, even email address! It’s easy to find who your looking for.
What non-administrators will see:
What all users will see: See a larger image here
ScreenCast: Magento Reward Points System
Eager for a sneak peak at the upcoming features in Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.7?? Look no further! He’s a screencast by Koby running you through the new Reward Points System and how to go about configuring the Reward Points System and how a customer can earn use Reward Points.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
The Future of Open Atrium: Beta 4 Release and Beyond
New processes, the Beta 4 release, and what’s coming in the stable release
In a few weeks we will release the next beta of Open Atrium. This will be our fourth beta, and it will have a bit more meat than some of the other releases, which I'll go into later in this post. So far Open Atrium has been downloaded more than 80,000 times, and this number, and all the attention it has received, has both exceeded our expectations and validated the work that has been done so far.
However, we still view this as beta software. We see a lot of room for improvement and have a lot of ideas about how we're going to make Open Atrium better. Its other users do as well, and on Community.OpenAtrium.com people have posted hundreds of feature requests, bug reports, suggestions, and support requests. This feedback has significantly influenced how we think about Open Atrium and how we've approached development. It has made us think long and hard about how Atrium is built and what changes in the underlying technology are needed to make it better.
Because Open Atrium is a platform that we build on we need it to be as stable and extensible as possible. This means avoiding duct tape coding. If a problem stems from a contributed module, we deal with the problem upstream rather than writing complex workarounds in Atrium's code. We go after the bigger problem. This makes Open Atrium a stable base to build on without having to 'un-code' anything when we develop custom Open Atrium based applications for clients. For the Open Atrium project, it means that we're not going to shy away from upgrading the internals of Atrium - at least not during the beta cycle. It also means that upstream bugs will sometimes persist in Open Atrium until there is an upstream solution.
Before I go into some of the changes that you'll see in Beta 4 and beyond, there have been some development process changes made in anticipation of beta 4 that effect the project as whole.
We are opening up our development process. It's a bit of a mental adjustment for us to take a project that has been internal for so long and make it truly a community effort, but we're resolved to do just that. We've had the issue tracker up at Community.OpenAtrium.com for a while now, and it has been absolutely invaluable. Recently we moved our development discussions to the public IRC channel #open_atrium on freenode.net. With a project like Open Atrium there's a challenge to properly segment support and development communications channels and things are currently still a bit mixed, so expect more changes as we sort it out and give everybody a place to find what they need.
Introducing the PBworks Template Store
(Image appears courtesy of Joe “Shiggy” Sciglitano)
The great thing about PBworks is that you can use it to do just about anything.
The bad thing about PBworks (at least for those of us who tell its story for a living) is that you can use it to do just about anything.
Saying that PBworks combines wikis, document management, project management, social networking, microblogging, and real-time communications (with integrated voice coming soon) requires strong lungs. More importantly, simply listing all the features in PBworks doesn’t necessarily tell you how it solves *your* particular problem.
That’s why we built the Template Store.
Not only does the Template Store show how you can use PBworks workspaces to solve specific problems, you can clone these examples into your own PBworks network, where you can customize them to meet your needs, or even convert them into custom workspace templates.
Plus, all 25+ of our templates are free of charge to PBworks users.
There are templates for specific industries (e.g. a Client Engagement Template for consultants, a PR Client Extranet for marketers) as well as specific functions and processes (a Branch Office Intranet for corporate use, a Presales Extranet for sales, and a Competitive Analysis Template for marketing).
If you’re already using PBworks Business Edition (formerly Project Edition) or Legal Edition, you can access the Template Store from your network — chose ‘Workspaces’ and select “Template Store.”
If you don’t currently have a network, you can preview the Template Store here. You can even submit your own templates for inclusion.
Check out the Template Store and see if there’s a template to solve your problem. And if not, leave a comment, and we’ll work on building one!
New Book: Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours
Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours helps you get up to speed with Drupal quickly. Whether you're starting from scratch or working to fill in some gaps in your Drupal knowledge, you'll find descriptions, examples, and Try It Yourself numbered steps to walk you through working with Drupal.
This book introduces you to Drupal and to major components ranging from the basics (overall design, themes, administration, security, and the like) as well as modules that are distributed with Drupal itself along with contributed modules that enhance your site. Each chapter is focused on a single task so that you can jump around according to your needs.
Washington, DC Drupal Meetup Tonight
When it is cold outside Jamison is even better
The first DC Drupal meetup of 2010 will be tonight at 7:00 pm at Stetson's. These meetups are a great chance to meet other local Drupal developers, find out about interesting projects being built with Drupal, and just learn more about the framework and the community. Two people have already volunteered to give five minute lightning talks on websites they've recently built with Drupal, and the floor will be open so if you'd like to present on something Drupal-related in five minutes or less, just speak up at the meetup.
There are more details about the meetup in the Washington DC Drupal group. Hope to see you there!
Week in DC Tech: January 11 Edition
Drupal, Twitter, and Twilio this week in Washington, DC
It will be another cold week here in Washington, DC, and one great way to keep warm and learn something while you're at it is to check out some of the technology events happening this week. Below are ones that caught our eye, and you can find a full list of events at DC Tech Events. Have a great week!
Monday, January 117:00 - 9:00 pm
DC Drupal Meetup: Drupal has become one of the hottest open source content management systems (that's what happens when the White House gets on board). Come out to this event to meet people building with it, learn about new projects and modules they're working on, and get a better understanding of Drupal and the Drupal community.
Tuesday, January 127:00 pm
Refresh Rockville: This month's Refresh meetup will be focused purely on socializing, so come out to talk with other new media professionals over beers.
From the Support Team: Changing the Magento ‘favicon’
This post is part of series by the Magento Enterprise Edition subscription support team covering tips, tricks and hints to some of the most common, and uncommon, issues as submitted by support customers.
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In a previous article, we covered customizing the logo in our customer facing transactional emails to reflect our own company’s logo to give our Magento shop a more professional look. This time, we are going to customize the “favicon” – short term for “favorites icon”, that is associated with your website and appears in the browser address bar and favorites menu. A favicon is a 16x16 pixel icon in no more than 16 colors.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the current favicon is shown as displayed on a Firefox browser.
We’ll want to update the standard Magento favicon and replace it with this one , a slight variation.
If you’re using a default theme, the new favicon.ico needs to be uploaded into the /skin/frontend/default/default/favicon.ico directory.
For custom themes, the favicon should go into the /skin/frontend/default/CUSTOM_THEME/favicon.ico directory instead.
That was simple and we have successfully updated our favicon! To view it we need to clear the browser cookies and cache and hit refresh.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
The Magento Webinar Archive
Did you know that many of our great webinars can be found on the Magento Webinar Archive? We get many requests for recordings of our great webinars and many people are looking to download and share them. Here are just some you might find interesting:
In the Magento Webinar Archive you’ll find a summary of each webinar, a recording, options to download in multiple formats and even a full length transcript.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
"Drupal: Creating and Editing Custom Themes" training video series from Lynda.com
New training to help you learn how to build Drupal themes is available online from Lynda.com. Drupal: Creating and Editing Custom Themes shows how a Drupal theme can alter the look and feel of a web site. Drupal evangelist and author Chris Charlton introduces the core themes that ship with Drupal, how to install and administer new themes, change color schemes, and add sub-themes. Also demonstrated is how to build a custom theme from scratch, what templates are possible in Drupal themes; integrate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript; and how to theme specific nodes, pages, and blocks by building a theme step-by-step for a fictitious online flower shop.