* Support for Downloadable/Digital Products. (to see this new product type in action visit the Magento Demo Store. We added an example of an MP3 product and an eBook )
* Added Layered Navigation to site search result page, with control on the attribute level to include or exclude attributes used on the search results page.
* Improved site search to utilize MySQL fulltext search
* Added support for fixed-taxes on product level for such taxes as “State Environmental Fee” in the USA and “WEEE/DEEE” in the EU.
* Upgraded Zend Framework to the latest stable version 1.7.2
* Added a Layered Navigation Cache for improved performance of large catalogs (currently in beta and is NOT recommended for production use).

Note: We do NOT recommend upgrading a production installation of Magento directly. Please backup database and all files before upgrading. Please make sure to check file permission before trying to upgrade through your Magento Connect Manager. This version includes an upgrade to the Magento Connect Manager and as such includes index.php and .htaccess files. If these files were modified you must create backups of your index.php and .htaccess files before upgrading as they will be overwritten. Once the upgrade is complete just overwrite these files with your original files (these files do not include any updates but must be distributed with the MCM).

Upgrading an Existing Magento Version

Upgrade your existing Magento installation to 1.2.0 through the Magento Connect Manager:

• Do NOT use your live or production site. We suggest making a copy of your site and upgrading that copy first.
• Backup your index.php and .htaccess files (if modified)
• Log into your Magento Connect Manager.
• Select the ‘Setting’ tab.
• Change the Preferred State to ‘Stable’, and save settings.
• For the Mage_All_Latest package select upgrade.
• Click on the ‘Commit Changes’ button. The upgrade should start.
• After upgrade is complete click on the ‘Refresh’ button.
• Copy your original index.php and .htaccess files back (if needed)
• Log into your admin and rebuild search index
• You should now have Magento 1.2.0 installed.

Problem & Solution:

I am at the installer page but it is telling me that i am missing a specific php extension.

Example message: PHP Extension “mcrypt” must be loaded

The above message tells us that your PHP do not have “mcrypt” compiled with it. You have to get your web host to re-compile PHP with “mcrypt”.

Another example:

PHP Extension “PDO_mySQL” must be loaded

This tells us that we are missing “PDO_mysql” extension for PHP on the server. Once again, you have to get your web host to re-compile PHP to include this extension.

PHP extensions that are required to run Magento:

There a few PHP extensions that are needed in order to run magento properly.

To check whether your server meet all the requirements to run magento, you may follow the instruction given in this post:

Magento Installation Requirement:

http://www.mtomto.com/8/magento-installation-requirement/

Once again, if you are looking for a reliable magento web hosting providers that support magento, feel free to check out our list of recommended web hosts over here:

http://www.mtomto.com/magento-hosting-providers/

Have a merry christmas & Happy New Year 2009!

I have notice that more and more people are setting up magento-powered stores but keep running into road blocks. For those who manage to install magento successfully, i believe you may run into one of these problems mentioned in this post.

Here are two common problems i have seen and this simple solution will probably fix 90% of these problems.

Problem #1:

I’ve managed to install Magento.  I’ve created a test catagory and a test product but they don’t appear on the home page.  What am i doing wrong?

Problem #2:

When i click on one of my product link, it return a 404 page not error.

Solution:

Try clear your store’s cache by following this steps:

Go to “System” > “Cache management”, under “Catalog Rewrites” and click ‘refresh’ .

Now, go back to your store’s frontend and try click on one of your product link. It should show up correctly now. (*cross my finger*)

What does “MTOMTO” stand for?

Well, i came out of this name within a short span of time right after i have received an email from rico at varien last night. (*wink* to rico if you see this :P) . MTO is a short-form stand for Magento. I must say i love the new name. It’s Short & sweet!

Do you want to get more traffic for your store? If yes, make sure your magento shopping store is search engine friendly! To do this, make sure your web hosting provider’s server had Mod_Rewrite enabled. For my case, my web hosting provider’s server had Mod_Rewrite enabled which mean my store is ready to be index by major searcn engines companies anytime soon.

In this post, we will do a simple Mod_Rewrite test to check whether it is enabled on your web hosting provider’s server.

What is the advantage of having a search engine friendly store?

Major search engine companies like Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others can index all your products pages more easily. When a visitor search on these search engine, your magento store had a higher chance of showing up during the search result. Imagine 1/4 of the search engine users found your store? You will be rich!

Of course, if you want to get better search engine result like being in the top 10/20, you may have to consult a search engine optimization company to help you with that.

How does a search engine friendly URL look like?

An example of a search engine friendly url for a magento store look like this:

http://www.myabcstore.com/sony-vaio-vgn-txn27n-b-11-1-notebook-pc.html

An example of a Non-search engine friendly URL look like this:

http://www.myabcstore.com/products.php?r=233&view=hHeL&goto=3423

Here is a quick guide on how to check whether your server had Mod_Rewrite enabled.

Put this 3 lines in .htaccess on your site.

For cpanel user, it should be under /home/username/public_html/.htaccess

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yahoo.com/$1 [R=301,L]

When you visit your site and it get redirect to www.yahoo.com, that mean Mod_Rewrite is enabled on the server. If your webhost do not mod_rewrite enabled, you may want to consider switch to another Mod_rewrite & magento-ready web hosting provider .

Here are the release notes for v1.1.8:

• Fixed #8684: js error on configurable product view page in blank theme
• Fixed generating URL for googleoptimizer export controller
• Fixed shipping tablerates for regions with the same code
• Fixed product information on review page
• Fixed #8720: CMS Blocks not recognized on Newsletter Templates
• Fixed #8729: Security warning in IE in admin under https on category management page
• Fixed #8743: Security warning in MSIE 6 on checkout page in modern theme
• Fixed #8722: Google Base API - Store URL incorrect
• Fixed #8753: Add Store Code to Urls to Yes breaking Google Base (due to duplicate admin/admin in path)
• Fixed #8727: mismatches in role resources list
• Fixed checkout as guest on single page checkout
• Fixed #8890: Fatal error on shipping estimate if session expired
• Fixed js error in Google API configuration section
• Fixed #8719: Google Base API - make destination country selectable (USA,DE,GB,…)
• Fixed #8731: Wrong country sent to Google Base
• Fixed #8772: configurable products are not editable
• Fixed editing custom options in Safari
• Fixed #8889: Flash 9 unable to upload image on MAC

Upgrade your magento today! If you need help with the upgrade, contact us. Sometimes, we can do for free.. (if we are in good mood. ^_^ ):)

This version includes over 350 issue resolutions for Magento 1.1.x that are listed in the release notes section, and new functionality that includes:

* Google Website Optimizer integration
* Google Base integration
* Scheduled DB logs cleaning option

Our comment:
The team finally fix the “Google Sitemap will not generate” bug.

I have upload all magento files and all the files’ permission are set correctly. However, i still run into “500 Internal Server Error” problem.

Solution:

If you are on cpanel server, check the “error_log” file for clue on what is causing the internal error. Most of the time it is due to incorrect permission set for file or directory.

Suphp-enabled environment:

If you are on a suphp-enabled server environment, keep all files & directories to 755 . By default, don’t change any permission for them. For me, i will simply upload everything and the next thing install magento through web browser. If you still run into problem installing magento, check out our recommended list of magento web hosting providers.

On Non-suphp server environment:

If you are on non-suphp server environment, you have to make sure respective directories are writable.

# chmod 777 var var/.htaccess app/etc
#chmod -R 777 media

First of all, make sure your web hosting provider meet the requirement before you install magento.

Two reasons why you should use this guide:

1. Your account do not come with SSH access and upload files via FTP is taking so long( it took me > 20minutes just to upload entire magento files via FTP)

2. OR you do not know how to install magento using SSH.

This guide is for you.

—————————–

Here is a quick way to upload all magento files using cpanel file manager:

( You can always check for newest release from http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/noregister )

Upload magento

1. Upload your magento-x.x.x.zip file to public_html/ via FTP. This gonna take sometime since the zip file alone is about 15mb big.

2. Upload finish.

Login to Cpanel > File manager

3. Navigate to the directory where you have just upload the zip file.

4. Right click the zip file and choose “Extract” . It should extract a “magento” folder.

5. Enter into “magento” folder , “Select all” . Right click on one of the selected file. Choose “move”

Move all files outside of “magento” folder.

6. Delete “magento” folder and the zip file.

Start installation

1. Create a mysql database & mysql user.

2. Import the sample data to your mysql database. (You can do so at Cpanel > mysql > phpmyadmin)

(You can get the .sql sample data from http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/noregister )

3. Start the installation wizard

www.yourdomain.com/install.php

Note: My site is hosted on a suexec/suphp environment. Therefore, i do not have chmod 777 to make certain directories writable. For other who are no on suexec/suphp ennvironment, you may require to make the file magento/var/.htaccess, the directories magento/app/etc, magento/var, and all the directories under magento/media are writable by the web server.

If you have problem with your web host, check out our list of recommended magento web hosting providers at http://www.mtomto.com/magento-hosting-providers/

Magento is a fantastic open source ecommerce shopping cart. However, the software will require a few important modules to be install on your web hosting provider’s server in order to get it working properly.

Requirement Check:

Upload this Script to check whether your server support magento:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/_media/magento-check.zip

Most webhosts should be running apache, php5,mysql 5 by now. However, do check that PHP include the specific extensions like PDO_MySQL while mySQL support innoDB engine.

Here are the basic requirement:

Web server: Apache 1.x, 2.x

PHP5.2.x and above

* Required extensions:
o PDO_MySQL
o simplexml
o mcrypt
o hash
o GD
o DOM
o iconv
o SOAP (if Webservices API is to be used)

- Safe_mode off

- Memory_limit 32M or more

MySQL:

• 4.1.20 or newer
• InnoDB storage engine

Crontab

• Ability to run scheduled jobs (crontab) with PHP 5

Mod_rewrite enabled

• To make your shopping cart search engine friendly

Currently, i had installed a copy of magento on my account hosted with mxhub.com on a cpanel server. My cart had been working well so far.