Redstage Magento Blog

Magento, with its wide support for multiple payment gateways, makes it easier than ever to accept customer payments. There are a plethora of payment gateways out there, and today we’re going to show you just how easy it is to set up Authorize.net. Authorize.net acts as an intermediary between your Magento store and the vast payment processing networks.

The Process:

• Gather Account-Specific Authorize.net Data
• Enter this Data into Magento
• Enable the Payment Module

I. Gather Account-Specific Authorize.net Data

Once you have an account with Authorize.net, you’ll need to obtain values for these fields:

• API Login ID
• Transaction key
• Merchant’s Email (this you should already have)

To find these, follow these steps (source):

1. Log in to your Merchant Interface at https://account.authorize.net
2. Click Settings in the main left side menu.
3. Click API Login ID and Transaction Key.
4. Under Create New Transaction Key, enter your Secret Answer.
5. Click Submit.

II. Enter this Data into Magento

Log in to your Magento Admin Panel.  Then, using the horizontal navigation at the top, navigate to System > and click Configuration.  Once that page loads, look for and click on “Payment Methods”, found in the left-column under the “Sales” category.  When the page loads, expand the “Authorize.net” area in the main-column by clicking on it.

Add the relevant Authorize.net values from the previous step, and set the various settings to your liking (e.g. which credit cards to accept, whether or not to require CVV validation, etc.)

Authorize.net Settings

III. Enable the Payment Module

While still in the “Authorize.net” area of System > Configuration, change the “Enabled” dropdown (first setting) to “Yes“.

Enable the Authorize.net Payment Module

Finally, click the “Save Config” buton found at the top-right hand side of the screen.

This is an old video of Roy Ruben from Varien talking about his vision of open source eCommerce and Magento. It was shot almost 3 years ago and shows the motivations of the company behind the system.

I first saw this over at TechCrunch’s article about Magento’s Funding.

The best part of that article is the end where they mention, “The roadmap for the future is apparently paved with additional products, with a number of “Mobile Commerce, Saas offering and other products/services” coming later this year.”. We can’t wait to see where the investment money goes and hope that the rumors of a mobile commerce app is very exciting.

Do you think that the guys at Varien were successful in their vision over the past 3 years? Leave a comment below!

How would you like to spy on your website visitors? Would it be useful to see visitor behavior, detailed down to mouse movement? The answer is YES! The site is called Clicktale. I made a quick video about the system, and how to get the free version. There’s a link to the site below the first video. Also, there’s an overview video under that so you can see a bit more detail about Clicktale, and how powerful it is. Take a look and enjoy!

Here’s an overview video of Clicktale, take a look.

Adding a video to a product greatly enhances the online shopping experience. The out-of-the-box Magento package doesn’t support video. This How-To shows just how to do that. We’ll be able to either (1) drop in HTML embed code from sites like YouTube, or (2) use an FLV file that we provide.

This article assumes you have the jQuery Javascript library installed and have “jQuery.noConflict()”‘ set up.  If you don’t have jQuery.noConflict(), then simply replace instances of “jQuery” with “$”.  If you don’t have this library, download jQuery here.

Here’s the sequence of steps we’re going to take:

1. Create a product attribute for the video code
2. Assign the newly created attribute to an attribute set
3. Modify the template files
4. Obtain and upload a copy of the free JWPlayer
5. Add video to a product using HTML embed code or using an FLV file

1. Create a product attribute for the video code.

Log in to your Magento Admin Panel. Navigate to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes. Click on the “Add New Attribute” button found close to the top-right hand corner of the screen. The first tab that’s open is the *Properties* tab. You are presented with lots of textboxes and dropdowns. Here’s what to fill them in with (you can also view this screenshot):

Attribute Properties

- Attribute Code: video
- Scope: Global
- Catalog Input Type of Store Owner: Text Area
- Default Value: [leave blank]
- Unique Value: No
- Values Required: No
- Input Validation for Store Owner: None
- Apply To: All Product Types

Frontend Properties

- Use in quick search: No
- Use in advanced search: No
- Comparable on Front-end: No
- Use in Layered Navigation: No
- Use in Search Results Layered Navigation: No
- Use for Price Rule Conditions: No
- Position: 0
- Allow HTML-tags on Front-end: Yes
- Visible on Product View Page on Front-end: No
- Used in product listing: No
- Used for sorting in product listing: No

Then navigate to the *Manage Label / Options* tab. You only have to fill in the “Admin” value, and for this use “Video“. This can be changed later if you need to.

Click the “Save Attribute” button to save the attribute.

2. Assign the newly created attribute to an attribute set (likely Default)

While still in the Admin Panel, navigate to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attribute Sets. From the right-hand column, labeled “Unassigned Attributes”, drag our new video attribute to the “General” group found in the middle column.

Click “Save Attribute Set” button to save the attribute set.

3. Modify the template files

You’ll need to use a text-editor and FTP client.

3a. video.phtml

Create a file with these contents:

<?php
$_product = $this->getProduct();
?>
<?php if( $video = $_product->getVideo() ){ ?>
<h2>Product Video</h2>
<div class="products">
<?php if( file_exists( getcwd() .'/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/'. $video ) ){ ?>
<div id="mediaspace">&nbsp;</div>
<script>
jQuery( document ).ready( function(){
jQuery.getScript( '<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl('videos/mediaplayer/swfobject.js'); ?>', function(){
var so = new SWFObject('/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/mediaplayer/player.swf','ply','470','320','9','#ffffff');
so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
so.addParam('wmode','opaque');
so.addVariable('file','<?php echo Mage::getBaseUrl(); ?>/skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/<?php echo $video; ?>');
so.write('mediaspace');
} );
} );
</script>
<?php } else { ?>
<?php echo $video; ?>
<?php } ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

And save the file as /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/template/catalog/product/view/video.phtml

3b. catalog.xml

Open up /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/layout/catalog.xml and add this line:

<block type="catalog/product_view" name="product_video" as="product_video" template="catalog/product/view/video.phtml"/>

as a child anywhere inside this node:

<block type="catalog/product_view" name="product.info" template="catalog/product/view.phtml">

… and save the file.

3c. catalog/product/view.phtml

Open up /app/design/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/catalog/product/view.phtml and add this line:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('product_video'); ?>

wherever you want the video to appear on the page. Save the file.

4. Obtain and upload a copy of the free JWPlayer

Download the player from: http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

After you download the ZIP file, extract and upload the files using an FTP client to: /skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/*

With the FTP client, rename the “mediaplayer-viral” folder to “mediaplayer”

5. Add video to a product

In the Magento Admin Panel, navigate to Catalog > Manage Products and click on the product you’d like to add video to. You should see a textarea labeled “Video”.

5a. Use HTML embed code

In the “Video” textarea, simply drop in the HTML code you’ve received (such as from YouTube) and click “Save” to save the product.

5b. OR use an FLV file

- Upload your FLV file to /skin/frontend/[your-package]/[your-theme]/videos/

- In the “Video” textarea, specify the filename of the FLV you’ve just uploaded.

Repeat Step 5 for all of the products you want to add video to.

Congratulations, you’ve added video to your products.

* This method is tested and working for Magento v 1.3.2.4

Great News! There’s a buzz around the open source community that there was regulatory filing that shows that Varien, the company that provides the Magento E-commerce Platform, raised $22.5 Million! I tracked the story back to socalTech.com (link) who first reported the news.

Here at Redstage, this is very exciting. We are huge fans of Magento, and to see their parent company get a huge investment is excellent. Now, there’s an important question… What is Varien going to do with all that cash?

Software Changes
They will most likely invest in the Enterprise version of Magento, creating new features and making it faster by hiring more developers, project managers, etc.. Hopefully, they don’t distance it too far from the free Community edition, or increase the already high price. Maybe they’ll make a new upgrade level, either in between or above the Enterprise version… It will be interesting to see how the actual software changes after an investment of this magnitude. I hope they don’t abandon the Community edition and focus solely on the Enterprise version.

Physical Expansion
They may open a new office or two… Magento is very popular in Europe where there might be a good spot for a sales/marketing office. We wouldn’t mind a new office over here on the East Coast either ;-) .

Marketing
We hope that they promote the Magento brand and do some high level marketing. This will attract more extension developers and build the Magento community. One of the main reasons that Magento has done so well over the past 2 years is because of the community of designers and developers that enhance the platform.

More marketing also attract more e-commerce businesses to use Magento, whether they’re switching to the platform, or starting up with it.

Partner Development
Something we would like to see are more partner resources. As a development firm specializing in Magento Development, it would be great if there were more sales and marketing resources available to sell the system, and to sell the enterprise edition when necessary. This is something that Microsoft is extremely good at. We are Microsoft Partners, and they provide a wealth of videos, marketing documents, trial software and other supporting documents to help partners sell their software. There are classes to learn programming, certifications to build trust, and a ton of other resources that aid their partners to sell more and develop better. It would be great if Varien created a similar system for the growing Magento community of designers, developers and resellers.

What do you think they’ll invest in? $22.5 Million is a powerful amount of money for any business, and when the product is already so good, and so popular, the investment is even more powerful.

What would you spend the $22.5 million on if you were running Varien? Leave your answers in the comments below!

Thanks!