Having this error is a bad bad thing and it is incredibly vital that it is sorted as soon as possible.  It will only increase your drop-off rate at the checkout, and people will be incredibly unsure about whether or not your site is safe enough to buy from.

The error occurs for one of the reasons:

1. Your images are not being referenced securely… (this includes backgrounds)
2. Your Javascript source is not being referenced securely.
3. If you are using Flash, the links within the object class must be secure.

So, the best thing to do, is either change the links of your images, backgrounds, and all the rest - from http:// to https:// alternatively, if you find that the templates are being used not only on your checkout but also on other areas of the website - then simply put // rather than http:// or https://.

This way, depending on the type of page you are on, it will automatically adjust and either pick up the secure or non-secure location of the target object.  This will instantly alleviate any potential problems in the checkout, and, encourage the users to carry on and buy with complete peace of mind!

This is a really big thing for us to be able to secure something like this, and we’re just really pleased that we can be able to give you the chance to save a bit of money when it comes to buying a theme.

eCommerce-Themes.com have an amazing array of quality looking Magento themes which are easy to install, right out-of-the-box - it really is that simple.  As well as offering themes, they also offer a professional service - so if you require something a little more tailored - they will do that for you as well!

Unlike numerous other theme sites I have seen - this lot actually have lots of DIFFERENT themes, all with different styles, looks, features and functions - so I would advise you take a look before the offer runs out.

When you get your theme, it’s so easy to get your site running, host your Magento site with Simple Helix, use thir one-click installer, upload your theme, add your products, get an SSL certificate - and by golly, you have yourself a website.  Why not give yourself a one-week challemge over the Christmas break - I would love to see your progress.

Anyhow, the voucher code is: BLASTED10

Type this in at the checkout to immediately benefit from 10% off any Magento Theme!  Click here for eCommerce-Themes.com

PS: Coming soon to Blasted Thing will be our exclusive Magento Themes and Magento Hosting Comparison facility.  100% indepdent - tried and tested.  We’ve used them do you don’t have to!

I used to use Actinic, and if I was to try to do this using the dinosaur of a program, I’d probably be spending the best part of a day changing the price of each individual product.  So, how do you do it on Magento?  Well it’s easy.  Simply navigation to Promotions > Catalog Price Rules…

Once in there, click to Add a New Rule.  Name your rule, make sure it is Active, pick the website you want the rule to apply for (if applicable), select what groups of customers you want it to be for (I wanted everybody to be able to benefit, so I selected “All”), and also select the date you want it to run.  The Priority box is only there if you have numerous price rules, so lets just set it to “1″ for now.

Then click on “Conditions” on the left, and add the condition “Status is Enabled”.  This means, for very product that is active on your site, this discount will apply. Next, on the Actions tab, select the discount you want to apply - then click “Save and Apply”!

This will now mean that your site wide saving is active.  Make sure your customers know about it - send out emails, post messages on your Facebook group, and above all, use Magento’s excellent templating system to get a banner quickly erected across the top of all your pages!  Job done!

Now you can lie back and (hopefully) enjoy more sales!

It’s all down to permissions, as you need to make certain folders in your Magento installation writeable.  With your FTP, ensure you make set the following files/folders to either 755 or 777.

/app/
/app/etc
/magento/
/media/
/var/
/index.php

If you action the permission change on the above folders, this should successfully solve the Internal Server Error problem and your website should display OK.

Options range from having a dedicated server, shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, or semi-dedicated. Their prices start from only $7.95 a month, which is fantastic if you’d like to have Magento professionally hosted for a very small price.

Similarly, because they have a team of Magento exprts on hand, if you have any problems, between them and the Magento forum, your issues will be sorted instantly!

All of A2’s web hosting, reseller hosting, and semi-dedicated hosting packages are equipped with everything you need to run Magento on your site including Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.0.x, and PHP 5.2.6 compiled with PDO/MySQL, mcrypt, hash, simplexml, GD, DOM, and iconv support.

I really like their simple-to-use website, and their Admin panel, once you sign up for an account, is really easy to use. The speed of the sites is incredibly fast, and accounts can boast features including unmetered disk space, unmetered transfers, cPanel Control Panel, AND unlimited domains! Not bad!

I’d definitely recommend them - let me know your experiences with these guys. We’ll be adding them to our Magento Hosting comparison page pretty soon, but by all accounts so far, they rate five out of five!

Look at A2 Web Hosting

Until now. 

Simply navigate to the file app/code/core/mage/customer/model/address/abstract.php and find the phrase “getTelephone” and you should comment out the code around this area, like so:

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/*if (!Zend_Validate::is($this->getTelephone(), 'NotEmpty')) {
            $errors[] = $helper->__('Please enter telephone.');
        }*/

Similarly, to remove the actual field itself, go to app/design/frontend/default/default/template/checkout/onepage/billing.phtml and app/design/frontend/default/default/template/customer/address/edit.phtml and remove the…

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<span class="required">*</span>

…or just delete the whole field! If you are doing the former, it’ll look something like this:

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<li><div class="input-box">
                <label for="billing:postcode"><?php echo $this->__('Zip/Postal Code') ?> <span class="required">*</span></label><br />
                <input type="text" title="<?php echo $this->__('Zip/Postal Code') ?>" name="billing[postcode]" id="billing:postcode" value="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getAddress()->getPostcode()) ?>" class="validate-zip-international required-entry input-text" /></div>
                <div class="input-box">
                    <label for="billing:country_id"><?php echo $this->__('Country') ?> <span class="required">*</span></label><br />
                    <?php echo $this->getCountryHtmlSelect('billing') ?></div></li>
            <li><div class="input-box">
                <label for="billing:telephone"><?php echo $this->__('Telephone') ?> </label><br/>
                <input type="text" name="billing[telephone]" value="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getAddress()->getTelephone()) ?>" title="<?php echo $this->__('Telephone') ?>" class="input-text" id="billing:telephone" /></div>
                </li>

Good luck!

In a way, as bad as it is to see much loved “brands” lost, it is nothing but the fault of the companies involved - how could they let this happen.  I know times are tough at the moment, but places like Woolies haven’t had a Unique Selling Point in years!  It has just become one of these stores that you only pop in to if you’re passing and you need a paper.

No-one ever goes to Woolworths to buy stuff - it is not a first choice destination, not when you’ve got several niché stores that do a better job.  Similarly, each and every store has got such a different profile - and there is little unity.  As one BBC reader put it: “You’d walk into one store and it is well ordered and well priced, and then you go to another and it looks like an industrial fly-tipping site!”

It’s crap - and it is bad management, and I always thought it’d take a financial crisis like this to cripple such organisations, and now it has happened.

It seems obvious to me now that the only way to succeed in business is not to attempt to be the “jack of all trades - master of none” - but concentrate on a small area, one where your expertise is high, you can afford to buy the stuff in bulk, and you can deliver on prices.

This is where companies like Primark will never have a problem - they concentrate on one thing. If they however decided to branch out into newspapers, pick n mix and Casio watches… then i might start to worry!

Sorry to see you go Woolies, you had a strong brand, and you always made the TV more Christmassy seeing your ads, but sorry, bad management has landed you where you are now.  So long…

Well, apparently it is me, and now the people of Bournemouth and Poole know that too.

You see the other day I woke up to the sound of Fire Radio, and I heard they were doing some “Last Text Tuesday” thing, whereby you should forward them the last text message that you received.  I didn’t know what the reason was to send in the text, but being a good sport, I thought I’d take part - so I got my last text and forwarded it to 81800.  Moments later on the air it was read out, and ridiculed, probably rightly so.  This is what it read..

“Hey Bamby, there’s some spagbol n crumble here if you wana come for dinner! I love you xxxxxx”

Firstly, I just want to say a few things.  Bamby was probably a mistake - it was probably either Sophie’s quick fingered mis-spelling of baby, and not indeed a much used pet name - so lets put that one straight.  Secondly, it was a right result, because the prize turned out to be a couple of tickets to see the Zutons at the BIC on Monday!  So that was a bit of good news!

Over the last year, I’ve somehow gained the magic touch with competitions on that radio station (anyone remember the 37 condoms I won??), so I have decided that I will be fair and let some other good people win by not entering anything for a while!

Later in the week it is my Dad’s birthday, and I’m going to buy his present this weekend - and then on the Friday it is our staff Christmas do, which will be with partners, in Southampton - very much looking forward to it.  We’re going to Jongleurs, then VIP-ing it up in a secret location that I cannot reveal just yet!

It’ll be the first time I’ll have consumed alcohol in a good while so I’m actually looking forward to the whole evening quite a bit!

This will probably be my last blog entry before Christmas, so I just want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  I’ll be uploading pictorial documentation of events over the seasonal period, so click Photos above during the month to see what I’ve been up to.

The benefits of the plug are four-fold. Firstly, Javascript AND CSS are combined into one file each. Secondly, compression occurs without the need for GZip support on your server. Thirdly, the plugin introduces something that it calls “Automatic Versioning” - this basically means that every time you update one of your JS/CSS files, a new url gets created forcing the customer’s browser to request the new version. Finally, it ensures that CSS images are properly served no matter what package/interface/skin you are using.

All might sound like gumph to you, but I’ve been playing about with it, and it seriously does affect your web site speed and performance. In some cases the size of files being downloaded is sometimes halved, and also the number of separate HTTP requests in brought down.

Twinning these factors will mean that you site should load much faster when requested. I recommend you check out the tool, and I’d be interesed to know your progress with it. Maybe use a Ping tester to do Before and After tests, and feel free to post your findings here!

Fooman Speedster Magento Plugin

I tried multiple browsers, different versions, but the same thing always occured on her computer. When I checked Firefox’s error console (and also by clicking the Error status box in IE) it gave me an error entitled “Error #2176″.

The image upload solution for products on Magento uses Flash, and unfortunately this error seems to occur on Flash version 10. If you downgrade to version 9, you should see the end of this error. It looks like Varien have realised this as a bug, and if you upgrade to Magento 1.1.7 or 1.1.8 - this should sot the problem out for you.