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ChatGPTMachine learning

Revolutionize Data Analysis with AI Plugin for Magento 2

Are you tired of spending hours analyzing data? Let Visualwebs’ AI plugin revolutionize your approach! With its advanced algorithms and intuitive interface, you’ll uncover insights faster than ever before. Say hello to easy data analysis with Visualwebs!

binoculars_blog
MarketingSearch engineWeb

Best Magento search engines in the cloud

With the incorporation of Elastisearch as the default search service in Magento 2.4.x and the elimination of the SQL engine, surely many users will see their needs covered for their customer product searches. But we have had cases of clients with very extensive catalogs, of more than 50,000 products, who continue to see Elasticseach somewhat ineffective and seek to take another step to differentiate themselves from the competition.

Nowadays a competent search system has to deliver results in fractions of a second. We know that e-commerce store users abandon sites where the loading of a page exceeds 2 seconds.

We have tried several for weeks, and we opted for these 2.

When using an external search service, Elasticsearch which we know consumes a lot of resources, remains in the background, freezing resources to the rest of the server services.

1. Sooqr search

This is for us the best search service that exists for Magento.

The functions that we highlight are the following, some are available only for the superior subscription plans.

Pros

  • Instant search, cached by remote script
  • Full customization of results sorting options. Default sorting field, Ascending, Descending.
  • Complete customization of search fields. Fields involved, attribute mapping, weight, connection with Google Analytics services.
  • Statistics
  • Free module for Magento available
  • Less server stress.
  • Full reindex of product feed takes less of 10 minutes, tested with large catalogs. Reindex can be done as separate Cron Job.
  • Tested with a product feed with > 7000 attributes.
  • Very efficient ticket/email support. They even offered us a free customization of the results template.

Cons

  • The service is not particularly cheap, for a store with 50.000 products, our customer pays around 300€ per month.
  • The company is Netherlands based and offers limited support for other EU languages like Spanish.

2. Doofinder

This is a very interesting second option, especially for customer looking for a more competitive price.

The functions that we highlight are the following, some are available only for the superior subscription plans.

Pros

  • It is so far cheaper than Sooqr, for a store with 50,000 products, the price would be around 50€ per month.
  • Instant search, cached by remote script
  • Multi-index search
  • Less server stress
  • The product feed is generated automatically in the background by the free module available.
  • Synonyms, promotional banners, redirections.
  • Very efficient support, by chat, email, providing quick resolutions & answers.
  • They offer native support agents in English & Spanish languages.
  • Free module for Magento available

Cons

  • The service has a limitation. If you use more than 1000 product attributes in your store, it just doesn't work.
magento_patch
Security

Magento security patches April 2015

Today all Magento users are getting an alert on backend. It advices to apply 2 security patches for fix new vulnerabilities on Magento. Is advised to apply asap before hacker´s community would receive news about this so my recommendation is don´t play with the security of your business.

The patches required are SUPEE-1533 and SUPEE-5344

https://www.magentocommerce.com/products/downloads/magento

Every patch checks first if your server has the required software, if you don´t have the ‘patch’ utility you need to install on your server,

yum install patch

in case of CentOS.

Just upload patches to root installation and run :

bash PATCH_SUPEE-1533_EE_1.12.x_v1-2015-02-10-08-19-16.sh;
bash PATCH_SUPEE-5345_CE_1.7.0.2_v1-2015-02-10-08-11-22.sh;

Example for Magento 1.7.2 Version

We applied these security patches in some installations, for our main Magento store and for some client´s sites. Notice every version of Magento has different patch version, so be sure don´t make a mistake and download wrong files.

In our case we applied every patch and make a git commit so we can roll back in case of issues.

Enjoy a healthy security.

I am not responsible for loss of data by using the comments of this blog. Make a backup of your system before you try any instructions in this post.

windows-8
Windows

Repair corrupted user in Windows 8

Recently I had an strange issue with windows 8 apps. Every time I start system all apps were closing unexpectedly.
After explain this problem in Windows community I noticed is a quite frequently issue. Support team person Germán Torres sent me some advices:

  • 1. Execute
    wsreset.exe
    from command line
  • 2. Execute these following commands as administrator (cli) :
  • DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
    Sfc /Scannow
    Powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\WinStore\AppxManifest.XML
  • 3. Run this dyagnostic tool for repair windows apps
    • http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=268423
    Neither of this solutions solve the issue. At this point I think in about 2 possibilites, Restore system or try to clone the user account. The first solution has the disadvantage of loss collection of installed programs so started with the option of clone the user account. For this solution you need to have 3 user accounts : 1. The current corrupted user account in my case ‘Francisco’ 2. A new ‘temp’ account with role ‘administrator’, this one will be deleted when the main account would be cloned and verified 3. The new ‘Francisco2’ account, this will be our destination account. Now proceed to restart sytem, and process with this steps:
    1. Log on as user ‘temp’ account.
    2. Open the My Documents folder by clicking the Start button, and then clicking Computer. Double-click the hard disk drive that Windows is installed on (it’s usually your C: drive), double-click Users, double-click the folder with the name of your account, and then double-click My Documents.
    3. Click the Tools menu, and then click Folder Options. If you don’t see the Tools menu, press Alt.
    4. Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
    5. Clear the Hide protected operating system files check box, click Yes to confirm, and then click OK.
    6. Locate the C:\Users\Old Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and Old_Username is the name of the profile you want to copy files from. In my case the destination is C:\Users\Francisco.
    7. Select all of the files and folders in this folder, except the following files:
      • Ntuser.dat

      • Ntuser.dat.log

      • Ntuser.ini

    8. Click the Edit menu, and then click Copy.If you don’t see the Edit menu, press Alt.
    9. Locate the C:\Users\>New_Username folder,  where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and New_Username is the name of the new user profile you created. In my case the destination is C:\Users\Francisco2.
    10. Click the Edit menu, and then click Paste. If you don’t see the Edit menu, press Alt.Important * If the system asks to overwrite any file, answer ‘No’.

    Log off, and then log back on as the new user.

    If you have e‑mail messages in an e‑mail program, you must import your e‑mail messages and addresses to the new user profile before you delete the old profile.

    1. Test along some days the new account and when everything is ok you can delete the old profile (‘Francisco’) as well ‘temp’
    Enjoy. I am not responsible for loss of data by using the comments of this blog. Make a backup of your system before you try any instructions in this post.