Magento 1.9 Ajax Login with Social Connectors

We are using Magento 1.9 right now for one the project as Magento 2.0 has certain performance issue and some of the extensions are not yet available for Magento 2.0. In this project we have a requirement to add Ajax Login with Social connector options which includes, login with Facebook and Login with Google. Problem we faced is, there is no free extension available in market which allows both ajax login and give you social connector options. So what I did is I installed two different extensions for Ajax Login and Social Connectors and then merged code from social connector plugin to Ajax Login plugin.

In this blog I am going to explain how you can do this.

First of you have to install following two plugins in Magento.

GoMage Social Connector
Ajax Login

With the first login you will get social login options in admin where you can configure your social networks like Facebook and Google and add necessary information like App id and redirect URL etc.

Once it's configured in admin, you will get Social Connectors option in login page like this.



But we need this options in Ajax Login Popup.




So to do this we will copy code for GoMage Extension to this. To do this go to.

app/design/frontend/base/default/template/digitalpianism/ajaxlogin

And open index.phtml file.

Add following code before buttons code.

<!-- Social Login -->
<a href="#" onclick="gomageSocialFBLogin();return false;" title="<?php echo $this->getText('facebook') ?>">
Login with Facebook
</a>

<a href="<?php echo $this->getUrl('gomage_social/google/login', array('_secure' => true, 'gs_url' => Mage::helper('core')->urlEncode(Mage::helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl())));  ?>" title="<?php echo $this->getText('google') ?>">
Login with Google
</a>

That's it and now you will have social connector options in Ajax login.




I have just added basic designs, you can change it as per your requirements.

FMCG Suppliers - Improve Order and Inventory Management With Mobile Application

In this blog I am going to explain how FMCG suppliers can improve their order and inventory Management with Mobile Applications.

In the past we have built eCommerce solutions for FMCG suppliers and from our experience and research we found some issues faced by FMCG suppliers in their order and inventory management.

No Brand Awareness Among Customers

Most of the FMCG suppliers either supply their own brand or promote some other brands but their customers are not aware of those brands as there is no information available of that brand to customers. Customers do not place order for that brand and eventually brand does not work.

No Product Availability

Customer places an order with certain products but those products are not available in market hence either order is canceled or delayed and customers are not happy. Main problem here is order management is not connected with inventory management. There is no information in low stocks hence orders are placed but there is no stock. Even customers are not ware about delays hence they get frustrated and eventually cancels orders.

Inefficient Distribution of Orders

There is no proper information of stocks in inventory hence orders can not be fulfilled, specifically in case of multiple warehouses. Sometime orders goes to warehouses where items are not available. So order can not be fulfilled or gets delayed as it goes from one to other warehouse. Even customers are not ware about delays hence they get frustrated and eventually cancels orders.

Inefficient Schedule of Deliveries

Customers are spread across various locations but they don't have proper location information hence order delivery is not planned properly and there are no proper distribution routes. Hence cost and time of deliveries in increased which leads to lesser profit and chaos in supply management. 

No Data and Analytics of Past Orders of Customers

They don't have proper data of past orders of customers and there is no analytics so they can not identify target customers for specific goods and items and they can not offer better rates and offers to them on specific customers. 

To over come this issues FMCG supplier can go for solutions with mobile application for their supply chain management and orders and inventory management. With mobile applications orders, dispatch , shipping and salesman there will be significant improvement in their sales and orders management.

Benefits of Mobile Application for Orders

Your customer will use this application for placing orders. Here are some benefits of it.

• Brand awareness
• No delay any placing orders
• Feedback on orders
• Instant notifications of order status
• Instant notifications on order cancelation
• Real time tracking of orders and movement
• Promotional schemes
• Orders and items analytics
• Surveys and polls

Benefits of Mobile Application for Salesman

Your salesmen will use this application to place orders and see analytics. It enables the field guys to effortlessly conduct processes like order booking, payment collections, filing daily sales reports, merchandising operations etc in real time. 

• Route planning
• Activity planning
• Visit reporting
• Complain reporting
• Competition tracking

With our solution for FMCG suppliers, you will get following benefits.

• Seamless visibility on daily product movement including stock transfers
• Accurate information on sales, collections, sales returns across the distribution channel in real time
• Shorter order to cash cycle
• Improved market coverage
• Analytics like monthly sales, per area, per customers
• Improved logistics and cost cutting because of route planning
• Better inventory management with low stocks notifications
• Better dispatch management

If you are looking for such solution for your FMCG business, contact us now.

Magento 2.0 Missing Write Permissions in Directory var When Run bin/magento setup:upgrade

Hello,

Recently in of our Magento product we installed a Payment Gateway module on our Magento for that we have to run following command.

php bin/magento setup:upgrade php

But every time we run this command we end with following exception.

Missing write permissions to the following directories: public_html/var

so at first it looks like write permission issue in directory, so we gave write permission to directory

chmod 777 ./var

And command run successfully but still we were getting same error while running

php bin/magento setup:upgrade php

That was little wired as we have all the necessary permission but still command was not working. So I decided to get error location and found out following file from where this error is thrown.

setup/src/Magento/Setup/Model/Installer.php

Open this and find following function.

/**
     * Check permissions of directories that are expected to be writable for installation
     *
     * @return void
     * @throws \Exception
     */
    public function checkInstallationFilePermissions()
    {
        $results = $this->filePermissions->getMissingWritableDirectoriesForInstallation();
        if ($results) {
            $errorMsg = "Missing write permissions to the following directories: '" . implode("' '", $results) . "'";
            throw new \Exception($errorMsg);
        }
    }

This is the function which throws an error so what I did is I commented all the code in this function and run the command again

php bin/magento setup:upgrade php

and it worked, it updated properly and after that I again uncommented this code and upload file back to server.

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A HACK, AS A MAGENTO DEVELOPER I DO NOT SUGGEST TO UPDATE SOURCE FILE BUT THERE WAS NO OTHER OPTION SO I TRIED IT. IF YOU ARE TRYING THIS ON YOUR SIDE, PLEASE BE CAREFUL.

Why a Restaurant Need a Mobile Website?

In this blog I am going to explain benefits of having mobile website for a restaurant.

First lets see what customers wants to see on restaurant websites.

1) Address of Restaurant
2) Phone Number
3) Location and directions with Maps
4) Menu of Restaurant
5) Amenities of Restaurant
6) Deals and Promotional Offers
7) Hours of Operation
8) Restaurant reviews
9) Reserve the table
10) Order online

Above mentioned content is essentials for restaurant to attract a customer. As most of the customer will search for a restaurant on Google or other search engines and they will get a link of website. When they visit the website they want to see all the details and make a decision to visit the restaurant. So if the details are missing customer may not visit the restaurant. Now a days most of the users use smartphones and tablets. A customer can search for the restaurant from mobile and comes to a restaurant site. Now lets see what issues customer may face if the the website is not mobile compatible.

1) They will see information in very small size that is not clear to read and see. For example see the screenshot below.

As you can see above content is hard to read unless you zoom it. Sometimes customer may not like to zoom in or zoom out. If you zoom in, you have to scroll left and right to read the content. Some customer may not like it.

2) They can not see the phone number and dial it directly from the site. This is not good as user may have to remember the phone number and dial it. Instead of this it will be good if user can click on phone number on site and it dials itself.

3) Many restaurant websites are build in flash for having nice animations and good looking content but this may not work on all the mobile devices so customer can not see the site.

4) There is no way to order food online on website. Some customer may want to carry out food from restaurant but they don't want to wait. If restaurant website does not allow online ordering, customer have to come to restaurant, order a food and wait till it gets complete. Instead of this if there is a facility to submit order, they can place the order and come at their connivence so they don't have to wait.

So in short an restaurant now a days need a mobile website with features like online ordering, booking a table, view menu, location maps etc. If a restaurant does not have it, they may be loosing the potential customers.

Contact me if you want to have a mobile websites for a restaurant with all the features. This will surely help to increase your business.

Email : hdave10@gmail.com

Skype: hiren.dave

Phone: +91-9327452580

eCommerce to mCommerce - Reach to maximum number of customers and grow your business

What is mCommerce?

According to Wikipedia, The phrase mobile commerce was originally coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey to mean "the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere, via wireless technology." Current definition is, mobile commerce is the process to buying or selling products and services through wireless handheld devices like mobiles, tablets, smart phones etc.

Few years back eCommerce revolutionized the process of buying and selling stuff. It gave you liberty to buy and sell stuffs on desktop computer from your home or offices. Now a days eCommerce seems to be hurdle in transacting online with advent of hand held devices having internet facilities. Now a days people are using more smart phones and tablets than desktops and notebooks. See the chart below, it grew up rapidly and expected to grow up in coming years.

Smart phones and tablets are used normally in day to day operations. Todays hand held devices are far more advanced. It lets you browse Internet, it gives you big storage, it gives you high computing and processing power. 

So what's the impact of mobile commerce on your business?

Mobile commerce can impact your business in number of ways. For example if you are running an online store, your customer may access your store from smart phone or tablets and it may be possible that your website does not look good on it and they may not buy the products. With the Google Play store and iTunes store, user can download number of applications on their mobile devices and can use those applications for their needs. So if you are offering some services and you don't have any mobile friendly website or application, you are loosing your customers or you are not reaching to enough customers. Because there are chances that customer search on mobile devices and they did not find you. Although you were able to provide service to your customer but just for the reason they can not find you, you loose the customers.

Why your current eCommerce web site is not good for mCommerce?

Mobile devices have limited screen width and height and your current website will not work properly. For example if you have fixed height and width in your website, on mobile device user have to frequently scroll left- right or up-down to see the content of the site. This is very awkward for users as they are not able to see content properly. Customer may be traveling or walking they have one hand occupied, then they may not be able to scroll or eventually they will close your site. Current navigation of your website may not be useful. For example you have navigation menu where user can hover mouse and the sub menu is displayed. This type of navigation will not work as on mobile devices user can not hover finger over menu. So in this case your customer will never know what are you offering and they may not buy anything on your site. Another example is of dynamic height and width. Let's you set a dynamic height and width on your website so it will adjust on mobile device automatically. In this case user will see small fonts, small images on your site and this is not very clear. So user have to zoom in and if they zoom in, again they have to scroll left and right. So this is not good user experience for any user. 

Why you need a mobile website or application? 

As we mentioned earlier, people with mobile devices will search for services from mobile devices so it's recommended that you need to have a mobile website or application. It increases your customers and business. No matter what your business is mobile website and application plays a big role here. It also increases productivity of your business. For example if you are an owner of eCommerce site, you need to be connected with your customers every time. You need to reply to their queries, you may want to check your stocks. So how about an application on your mobile which let you do all these stuff? If you are a doctor running a hospital, how about an application that let patients to book an appointment from mobile or check their reports on the go? There are number of such examples.

Today no matter what your business is you need something which supports mobile commerce.

And that's where we steps in. We have number of solutions for mobile commerce starting from mobile websites to mobile applications and mobile marketing. Use the mobile commerce and grow your business. Contact me if you need mobile commerce solution.

Email : hdave10@gmail.com
Skype: hiren.dave
Phone: +91-9327452580