Not exactly the most user friendly message, and given that it features the Magento logo, name and copyright it can leave users scratching their heads, wondering if you even exist and who this ‘Magento’ is. If your database server goes down for a few minutes for routine maintenance, etc., you users see this message instead of your site.

I’ve seen quite a few Magento sites implemented by designers that otherwise seem to know Magento fairly well that don’t change this file! While, ideally, a site will never be down and will never experience an error, we all know that 100% uptime is an unattainable goal. It’s important to have a user-friendly experience in the rare situation where your site does encounter an error, and the default Magento error screen, while great for developers, isn’t very user-friendly.

In Magento 1.4, you can edit this screen by editing /errors/default/page.phtml – note that this path is from the Magento root directory, and not within the /app/design or /skin directories. This directory, /errors/ contains a number of error-reporting features that have been recently added, so in addition to editing /errors/default/page.phtml to make it a bit more user-friendly and appealing (or at least making it match your site’s template, instead of the default Magento template!), I recommend checking all of the files – there’s some configuration files with some interesting options.

Changing the Default Magento Error Screen is a post from: Creatuity.

The article discusses how more technology professionals (and especially web professionals) are moving from the traditional epicenters of the technology ‘world’ within the US – California and, to a lesser extent, New York – to places like Wichita, Kansas and Omaha, Nebraska. The article mentions that, as one might expect, the salary of the average software engineer in Kansas is about 22% lower than that of the same engineer in California. However, while the article briefly mentions a lower cost of living, it never delves into real numbers.

A quick bit of research turned up some federal cost of living data on San Francisco, California and Wichita, Kansas – the cost of living in Kansas is 39% lower. So, that 22% ‘pay cut’ from moving from California to Kansas actually ends up being around a 15% raise when you factor in the cost of living. Combine that with the fact that sites like oDesk.com allow web professionals to work for clients all over the world from any location with an Internet connection, and I think we’re seeing the start of a much larger shift, where the next big thing is just as likely to come out of a small, nondescript office in a Midwestern state as it is to come out of a well-funded, VC-backed startup in a trendy neighborhood in San Francisco.

Tech firms located in the traditional ‘hot zones’ for our industry still have a large advantage, no doubt – having so much talent, so many ideas and so many venture capital firms all located in a small, concentrated area makes it much easier to launch the next big thing in an area like Silicon Valley. However, I think those exact same factors may give entrepreneurs in the Midwest and other “non-traditional” areas an edge – when you have to fight for funding or even throw the idea of VC funding out and bootstrap your company yourself, when talent is harder to come by, etc., you evaluate opportunities differently, and your entire work philosophy changes.

Areas like the Silicon Prairie require firms to be leaner, more agile and more willing to fight for each and every dollar, and I think that’s creating an environment that will produce some of the most exciting new web technologies and concepts in the coming months.

Of course, one could argue that the particular city or state (or even country) a web firm’s headquarters is located in is quickly becoming meaningless as remote working, distributed teams and the like become the norm, not the exception, in our industry – which is a topic I hope to discuss soon! Until then, what’s your take on tech firms and especially web entrepreneurs moving out of California and into the Midwest?

Life Outside of California: Midwestern Tech Firms Gaining Attention is a post from: Creatuity.

Stay tuned – things could get a little rocky here for the next few days as I move everything around, so I apologize for any broken links – however, in the end, I hope to make Creatuity.com a much more useful, up-to-date site for your reading pleasure!

Coming Soon – Much Needed Improvements to Creatuity.com is a post from: Creatuity.

Users deploying Magento within the US should be aware of the fact that the default email templates send the last 4 digits of the customer’s credit card number and the expiration date of the customer’s credit card in the order confirmation, invoice and other related emails.

Luckily it’s a fairly simple fix – you’ll need to edit one of your template files on your server, which if you’re using the default template will be located at app/design/frontend/default/default/template/payment/info/cc.phtml

You’ll want to remove line 31, which reads:

<?php echo $this->__(‘Expiration Date: %s/%s’, $this->htmlEscape($this->getCcExpMonth()), $this->htmlEscape($this->getInfo()->getCcExpYear())) ?>

Many stores will also want to remove the previous line, which includes the last 4 digits of the customer’s credit card number in the emails sent to the customer. That line is:

<?php echo $this->__(‘Credit Card Number: xxxx-%s’, $this->htmlEscape($this->getInfo()->getCcLast4())) ?><br />

Default Magento Template is not FACTA Compliant is a post from: Creatuity.

To fix this, edit design/frontend/[THEME NAME]/default/template/googlecheckout/link.phtml

Find the line, around line 34, that looks like:

<input type=”image”  src=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageUrl())?>”

And edit it, adding the section in bold:

<input type=”image” style=”height:46px;” src=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageUrl())?>”

You’ll want to change 46px to an appropriate value for the size of Google Checkout button you are using; 46px is for the large version of the button.

Magento Fix – Tiny Google Checkout Button in Cart? is a post from: Creatuity.

We’re having trouble getting UPS rates to work via the XML interface; they worked great via Magento’s default UPS integration, but this particular customer needed integration via the XML interface so that they could pull their negotiated rates from UPS.

To do this, you change the API type to UPS XML in the Config section of Magento. However, there’s a few “gotchas”, as documented in this forum post – first of all, the URL’s that Magento uses by default are old and deprecated. The new URL’s should be:

Rates: https://onlinetools.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Rate

Tracking: https://onlinetools.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Track

Second, according to that post, there may be issues with the UPS SSL certificate on that server. I don’t see any issues here, but if you encounter problems, the workaround recommended by that developer is to add the following two lines just about both places “$xmlResponse = curl_exec($ch);” appears in app/code/core/Mage/Usa/Model/Shipping/Carrier/Ups.php” – the lines to add are:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

I am NOT a fan of this workaround, since it disables the checks to ensure the SSL certificate the server you have connected to is valid and you haven’t been connected to an imposter.

Finally, after changing the XML URLs, we were still having trouble. By default, Magento does very little logging, but if you have logging enabled and the directory var/log exists and is writeable by your webserver’s user, you can send your own output to the Magento log with the command Mage::log(); i.e., Mage::log(“This is an error! ” . $error);

We added Mage::log($xmlResponse); after the call to curl in app/code/core/Mage/Usa/Model/Shipping/Carrier/Ups.php and discovered the following response from UPS in our log:

<ErrorDescription>Packages must weigh more than zero pounds.</ErrorDescription>

Apparently the items in the user’s cart had a weight of 0.01, which Magento was sending as 0.01 but UPS wasseeing as 0. A quick hack in app/code/core/Mage/Usa/Model/Shipping/Carrier/Ups.php fixed this, by defaulting any package weighing less than 1 pound to a weight of 1 pound.

Specifically, we changed this code:

protected function _getXmlQuotes()
{
$url = $this->getConfigData(‘gateway_xml_url’);

$this->setXMLAccessRequest();
$xmlRequest=$this->_xmlAccessRequest;

$r = $this->_rawRequest;
$params = array(
‘accept_UPS_license_agreement’ => ‘yes’,
’10_action’      => $r->getAction(),
’13_product’     => $r->getProduct(),
’14_origCountry’ => $r->getOrigCountry(),
’15_origPostal’  => $r->getOrigPostal(),
‘origCity’       => $r->getOrigCity(),
‘origRegionCode’ => $r->getOrigRegionCode(),
’19_destPostal’  => $r->getDestPostal(),
’22_destCountry’ => $r->getDestCountry(),
‘destRegionCode’ => $r->getDestRegionCode(),
’23_weight’      => $r->getWeight(),
’47_rate_chart’  => $r->getPickup(),
’48_container’   => $r->getContainer(),
’49_residential’ => $r->getDestType(),
);

To this (changes in bold)…

protected function _getXmlQuotes()
{
$url = $this->getConfigData(‘gateway_xml_url’);

$this->setXMLAccessRequest();
$xmlRequest=$this->_xmlAccessRequest;

$r = $this->_rawRequest;
$weight = $r->getWeight();
if ( ($weight < 1) OR (is_null($weight)) )
$weight = 1;

$params = array(
‘accept_UPS_license_agreement’ => ‘yes’,
’10_action’      => $r->getAction(),
’13_product’     => $r->getProduct(),
’14_origCountry’ => $r->getOrigCountry(),
’15_origPostal’  => $r->getOrigPostal(),
‘origCity’       => $r->getOrigCity(),
‘origRegionCode’ => $r->getOrigRegionCode(),
’19_destPostal’  => $r->getDestPostal(),
’22_destCountry’ => $r->getDestCountry(),
‘destRegionCode’ => $r->getDestRegionCode(),
’23_weight’      => $weight,
’47_rate_chart’  => $r->getPickup(),
’48_container’   => $r->getContainer(),
’49_residential’ => $r->getDestType(),
);

Hope you found this helpful! If you still have trouble, leave a question in the comments and we’ll try to help out as best we can.

UPS Negotitated Rates and Magento is a post from: Creatuity.

The bug has been reported to Varien, and the Varien bug tracker reports it has been assigned to a team member, but so far Varien has not said anything about a potential fix. In the meantime, here at Creatuity we’re attempting a work-around by starting our new stores on Magento 1.1.8 and running the osCommerce import before upgrading to 1.2.x, however, this can be more difficult than it sounds, since installing any extension via Magento Connect seems to trigger an automatic upgrade to the latest version of Magento.

If you have a fix or workaround for this issue, feel free to post it in the comments, below!

osCommerce Import for Magento Does Not Work With Magento 1.2 is a post from: Creatuity.

Because of this, I’ve been watching and learning more about the Amazon Kindle for quite some time now, and as you may have heard, Amazon announced the follow-up to the Amazon Kindle, the Amazon Kindle 2, today! The device, which is thinner than some magazines and lighter than the typical paperback uses a breakthrough technology known as e-ink or electronic ink. It’s completely unlike any screen you’re used to – it doesn’t use a backlight, and instead behaves more like traditional ink.

Kindle 2 comes complete with a free 3G cellular Internet connection – there’s no monthly or setup fees, unlike a cell phone such as the iPhone. You can browse, preview and purchase books directly on the Amazon Kindle 2 using this connection, so there’s no need to connect to – or even own – a computer.

The biggest new feature, in my opinion, is the addition of a text-to-speech feature that turns any book, blog, magazine or newspaper you receive on your Kindle 2 into an audio book by reading that book to you!

You can preorder the Kindle 2 now – it’s currently scheduled for release on February 24th, 2009. if the original Kindle is any indication, Amazon will run out of the Kindle 2 very quickly. It’ll be interesting to see the impact this announcement has on Amazon’s stock price (AMZN) as well as if the Kindle 2 sells out like the original Kindle did, considering the massive difference in the economy between when the Kindle was released and when the Kindle 2 will be released.

Do you own a Kindle or a competing ebook reader? What do you think about it? Are you excited about the Kindle 2? Let us know in the comments!

Amazon Announces Kindle 2 Follow-up to Kindle e-Book Reader is a post from: Creatuity.

Don’t let the free/open source tag scare you off, either. Unlike many other projects, such as osCommerce (which in many ways inspiried Magento), Magento was created by and is supported by a company which offers professional support plans. There are plans to meet every need, from $42/month basic support packages all the way up to the $400/month ‘platinum’ support plan that provides 24/7/365 support with a guaranteed 2 hour response time.

Another key difference with Magento is Magento Connect, which makes it easy for third-party developers to package and make available modifications and other modules that enhance Magento’s functionality. There are already nearly 500 of these third-party extensions, which can be downloaded and installed via a simple point-and-click web-based interface. Of these, over half have been released completely free, with the remaining extensions ranging in price for under $10 all the way into the hundreds of dollars.

Here at Creatuity we’re deploying a number of Magento-based websites for both internal projects as well as several of our clients. We also have a number of new Magento extensions in the works, so stay tuned for more information!

Magento Commerce – Award Winning Free eCommerce Platform is a post from: Creatuity.

Updated Company Website is a post from: Creatuity.