Checkout

Making FedEx api show shipping estimate

Making FedEx api show shipping estimate

There always comes the time when shopkeeper decides that he want’s to inform his customer of shipping estimate on checkout, so they could know approximately when they will get their goods. And for that, many shops today rely on API-s like ones from USPS or FedEx. Both of which are available for Magento.

In this article I will be showing you how to override FedEx carrier to return shipping estimate for given rates.

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Prevent PO Boxes in shipping address field on Checkout

Prevent PO Boxes in shipping address field on Checkout © jechasteen@sxc.hu

We recently integrated a feature that would prevent users from creating an order with a PO Box in Australia. Since we are already familiar with Australia Post shipping integration (and heavy modifications of it, I might add :)), the first thing that came to mind is to have a look if there’s some API or web interface that can be used to filter out post codes that are linked to PO Boxes. Many high volume addresses and/or PO Boxes in Australia have their own post code, so it looked like an obvious solution. It turns out that it’s not that simple or logical, since there are many edge cases where you can not reliably tell if you should filter the code out or not. There is a guide made by Fontis that shows how to validate the input fields in order to filter out PO Boxes. However, in our case we had some dynamic content loading with Temando shipping method integrated. This guide is intended as a more general solution that is compatible with Checkout page’s dynamic content and third party Shipping methods integration like Temando.

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The amount of checkout steps doesn’t matter!

The amount of checkout steps doesn’t matter!

E-commerce industry has obsessed with the amount of checkout steps in terms of conversion rate optimization for far too long. It’s time we put a stop to it. Lots of businesses – services, extension providers etc. – were built upon idea that one step checkout is far better for your conversion rate than multi-step checkout.

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CheckItOut, alternative checkout for Magento

CheckItOut, alternative checkout for Magento

If for some reason you are not a big fan of Magento’s default One Page Checkout concept / workflow, it might be worth checking out alternative. Usually these alternatives come in a form of so called “one step checkout” where main difference is that entire customer data / payment data / shipment data is displayed not just on one page, but in one “piece”. Why is this important? Well, it usually leads to a bit better user experience. Even a fraction better user experience can make a difference between new order and abandoned cart. No one likes abandoned carts :).

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How to translate product names in Magento through .csv files

How to translate product names in Magento through .csv files

Let’s add to cart one item from our Magento community edition. If you have MCE with sample data you can visit something like this: http://loc.magento.com/sony-vaio-vgn-txn27n-b-11-1-notebook-pc.html?___store=german&___from_store=default
Add item to your cart and you’ll see success message “Sony VAIO VGN-TXN27N/B 11.1″ Notebook PC was added to your shopping cart.”. Now if we add in our .csv file for de_DE translations something like this:

"%s was added to your shopping cart.","%s wurde zum Warenkorb hinzugefügt."
"Sony VAIO VGN-TXN27N/B 11.1" Notebook PC","Sony Deutsch VAIO VGN-TXN27N/B"

If you have already setup all required things for “German” translations, then try again buy same product and you will not be able to see our translated “success message”. It’s not only because of “"” in product name.

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There’s no “EMPTY CART” on Magento’s cart page

There’s no “EMPTY CART” on Magento’s cart page

Or at least, hasn’t been there yet. Recently I had to do one too many cart tests, and one of most annoying things was when I had to empty it, As anyone – I had to click it one by one. Today I’m going to explain how can you avoid this by simply creating one simple extension, and enabling “Empty cart” link functionality.

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Magento PayPal Standard – How to pay with currency other than base one and do it in your language

Magento PayPal Standard – How to pay with currency other than base one and do it in your language

Let’s assume that you have a task to implement multiple currency feature in some Magento based project.
What will happen if your client choses PayPal standard as payment method?!
Well, you might be a little dissapointed to see that there is no way to pay in chosen currency. 🙁
Magento tells you that order was placed using chosen currency, but is it true?

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Are Recurring Payments PCI Compliant?

Are Recurring Payments PCI Compliant?

For many customers and / or online store owners this is a great question. Main concern for customers is if they subscribe to something, that means that someone holds their credit card information (potential risk), and this is important question for store owners as well since they can be fined if they’re not compliant. This article is intended for store customers, store owners and mainly for store developers, as if they know that, others can be informed. Read on!

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How to modify existing extension without fear?

How to modify existing extension without fear?

Today I’m going to give you an real life example on how to modify commercial extension in painless manner. If you know how to modify it – great, but is your approach best one? I’ve added functionality and modified behaviour of OSC’s OneStepCheckout extension without any fear of what will happen if client decides to upgrade it to newer version. And finally – here’s how!

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Custom checkout cart – How to send email after successful checkout

Custom checkout cart – How to send email after successful checkout

Recently I have been working on a custom checkout page for one of our clients in Sweden. I had some trouble figuring out how to send default Magento order email with all of the order info. After an hour or so of studying Magento core code, here is the solution on how to send email after successful order has been made.

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Magento’s Onepage Checkout in a nutshell

Magento’s Onepage Checkout in a nutshell

For the last two days I’ve been working on a custom checkout page for one of our clients. Basicaly a page can be shown in Magento using simple Core_Template type. Basically all code is set inside the .phtml file so it can be shown on every possible page or block, meaning it’s object independent, no inheritance. Something you can call from with your layout files like

<block type="core/template" name="checkout_customcart" template="checkout/customcart.phtml" />
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