Magento and Color Swatch FAQs

Magento and Color Swatch FAQs

Here are a few Magento and Color Swatch FAQs you may find useful. These can be more useful than a general tutorial because they answer specific questions you may have upon encountering a problem.

Q: How to troubleshoot the attribute manager in magento?
A:
1.Login to your Magento control panel. The URL of your control panel, as well as your username and password, will have been given to you when you first set up your online store.

2.Navigate to “Catalog,” then “Attributes” or “Manage Attribute Sets.” This will bring you to your Attribute Manager. On the left panel you will see a list of your individual attribute sets, which are your individual products. In the middle, you will see groups into which these sets are broken up.

3.Check your attribute sets to make sure the default values are always filled in, even if blank. The default values are required by Magento, such as name, price and SKU. If you wish to have these values blank, you must use the space bar to create an empty character. If these values are not filled in, Magento will not work properly.

4.Check for any duplicates or doubles of the same product. If two products have the same name and similar information, this may cause Magento to not run properly. If this is the case, right-click on the product and select “delete” or change the name of one of the products.

5.Make sure to include all the required attributes if you are using a data feed to Google. A data feed allows your products to be searchable in the Google search engine. For this to work, you have to include every attributed required by Google, which includes basic information, availability and price. If these are not included, then attribute manager will not work with Google.

 

Q: How to set up the shipping method in Magento?
A:
1. Make sure you have set-up the origin address in System > Configuration > Shipping Settings. If during checkout your receive a message like this:
‘This shipping method is currently unavailable. If you would like to ship using this shipping method, please contact us’
Change the zip code from 5 digits to 5+4 (Example: 91101-4321). And retest the shipping. Now remove the last 4 digit of your zip code and save again. And retest the shipping result during checkout.

2. Make sure you have selected the correct allowable fields for each shipping method. To select multiple fields hold down the shift key when clicking on the fields to make them blue.

3. As a last resort, turn on debugging for the specific shipping type your are having trouble with:
Here is an example on how to set-up debugging for FEDEX:
In file app/code/core/Mage/Usa/Model/Carrier/Shipping/Fedex.php approx line 409:

-Locate this line of code
$responseBody = curl_exec($ch);
Add this line of code immediately following that above code line
Mage::log($responseBody);
-Rename the old Fedex.php to something else and load your new revised Fedex.php.
In your Magento Admin enable debugging: Admin > Configuration > Developer > Log Settings > Enabled = Yes
-Now watch var/log/system.log for raw information received from fedex during your transactions. Your error will look something like this:
61528Invalid origin postal code.

 

Q: How to set up zoom on simple products?
A: Here’s how you can get the zoom to work on simple products:

STEP 1.
Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attributes
find attribute with attribute code enable_zoom_plugin and apply it for “simple” product type.
This will enable ColorSwatch menu on the product edit page for products type “simple”

STEP 2.
Go to edit your “simple” product, find ColorSwatch tab in the left submenu and enable zoom
You almost done, now you only need to add the missing JavaScript code to show perload.

STEP 3.
Open file [your magento root]/js/colorswatch/
colorswatch.source.js
copy JavaScript class SMDesignColorswatchPreloader (start line 0 , end line 43)
Now create new file and paste SMDesignColorswatchPreloader class and initialization.
Example : /js/colorswatch/preload.js

STEP 4.
You’ll have to upload xml and instruct magetno to load preload.js which you made in   STEP 3.
There are two ways of doing this.
WARNING update layout only once.Use STEP 4.1 or STEP 4.2 but do not use both.

STEP 4.1. if you’ll use zoom on ALL simple products, it’s best to update layout in xml like   this:
Open /app/design/frontend/default/default/layout/smdzoom.xml and add after “”
just before

STEP 4.2. manualy update xml on each simple product using backend. You can do this when you edit your product, in tab design, by clicking on the field called “Custom Layout Update”
and update header for simple product :

Q: What if the plugin doesn’t show up in Magento Administration?
A:
Please be sure to switch off magento caching and magento compiling before you install the plugin. If you have already uploaded the plugin files to your webserver, and plugin options don’t show up in your magento administration, turn off your magento cache and magento compiling, then refresh any page in magento administration. Plugin options should show up now.

 

 

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