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Eric Clark

Magento SVN Usage – Best Practices

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In this article we talk about best practices around using Subversion (SVN) with Magento to help you maximize its many benefits. Anyone who works with Magento Platform will be interested in this easy to understand capabilities and benefits overview of Magento SVN. Whether you’re a store owner or a developer, SVN can make your life easier.

Quick Summary

  1. High-level explanation of SVN
  2. Who should use SVN?
  3. Why it should be used?
  4. Specific things to watch out for with Magento & SVN
  5. Bonus: Tools for the Trade

SVN-Environment Relationships

1. High-level explanation SVN

SVN (aka Subversion) improves the development process. Its an evolution of CVS (aka Concurrent Versions System) which allows developers to maintain local, staging, and production environments. It’s best practice for most software development (and Magento) projects to utilize some type of version control system. Git is worth noting as an alternative to SVN. The main difference being that Git stores everything locally whereas SVN stores things on a repository hosted on a centralized server where all updates are pushed and pulled. Typically people either prefer SVN or Git, both have good reasons and arguments. But for the purposes of this article, though, we are laser focused on Magento SVN usage and not so much the argument between which is better to use.  Server management is not one single thing that you do, but depends on what you use the server for, and whether you have a virtual server, or a physical server. Go through servermania.com/server-management site for more details about server management services. Server management often consists of business continuity planning. In business continuity planning many people feel that virtual servers are easier to with than physical servers are. The problem with this type of Linux server management is that there are times when you would need to patch multiple systems together and when using virtual servers this can be problematic.

Consistency is one of the key elements in Linux server management. In order to have consistency in your Linux server management you will need predefined configuration parameters for all of the application servers and the database servers to follow. If you are using virtual servers to do your work with you are going to find that maintaining the configurations and keeping them completely up to date will be more important than it would be on a physical server.

Before server management can be performed accurately you have to decide what your server is going to need to be capable of doing.

• You need to determine the amount of up-time and down-time that you would find acceptable in your system.
• You must decide how many other servers will eventually connect to the one you are developing so you can set protocols on how to expand the system in the future.
• You must decide if you need a physical server that you can adjust or if you could possibly work with a virtual server
• You need to decide if you can do your management procedures for yourself or if you will need to hire a professional company to manage this part of your operation for you

There are excellent online tools and resources available to help you program, manage, and incorporate new procedure protocol into your servers. You have to be willing to learn the ropes, and use the guidelines available to you. Remember that those guidelines were established through the trials and errors of people that used the system before you so they are going to save you from making costly mistakes in the future.

Simply put, SVN is a tool that keeps a revision history of code over a period of time. You keep project code located within the repository and pull a copy of the entire code with one simple command. As people work on the project, updates to the code are committed to the repository, which allows anyone who is “linked” to the repository to sync their code with the latest changes via one click of a button. A simultaneous, multi-user environment is organized for team-based development and proper administration.

There are an incredible number of benefits to SVN… too many to mention here.

2. Who should use SVN?

Everyone who works with Magento should use SVN. As a rule of thumb, SVN should be used in any significant software development project (unless you use Git as an alternative).

3. Why SVN should be used?

SVN allows multiple developers to build simultaneously in an organized fashion with a detailed history of the progress. This ensures that the live storefront (production environment) is always intricately cared for and remains “open for business”. There’s nothing worse than an outage in the eCommerce world and using SVN with Magento helps you to hedge against such events as it relates to your code. Every developer has experienced early on in their career the inevitable mistake of removing a file via FTP, only left to realize that file is lost in space and no longer retrievable. Thanks to SVN, you will be able to recover and restore this file in no time. The developer’s life becomes easier; and your eCommerce business is safer. When used properly, SVN ensures reliability, integrity, speed, and fall-back recovery.

4. Specific things to watch out for with Magento SVN

In our experience, there are a few specifics to watch out for when using SVN with Magento. Without getting too technical, here are a few things we’ve learned along the way:

  • Watch out for the caching. Utilizing “SVN:ignore” is the key to allowing the local environment to cache correctly. I would recommend setting SVN to “ignore” for the following (at least) when maintaining separate environments:
    • /app/etc/local.xml (or use SVN lock instead for this)
    • /media/catalog/product/cache
    • /media/tmp/*
    • /var/cache/*
    • /var/report/*
    • /var/log/exception.log
    • /var/log/system.log
    • /var/locks/*
    • /var/session/*
    • /var/tmp/*
  • Create and execute test script. We’ve learned the hard way to stick to a quality test script as we merge different branches into the main SVN repository (used for production). Testing major changes in a staging environment prior to going “live” to production with the new changes can save a lot of heartache later on. Don’t underestimate testing your changes, especially with Magento’s complex architecture.
  • Create branches for project phases. Sometimes it helps to create a “branch” for each phase and a staging environment for each branch (assuming the project is large enough to call for it). This makes it easier to rollback and merge updates, if needed.
  • Keep the entire Magento directory maintained in SVN. Call us crazy, but we prefer to keep the entire Magento directory maintained via a SVN repository. We do this so that we can upgrade, modify, and perform other changes locally prior to streamlining the changes to the staging and production environments.

5. Bonus: Tools of the Trade

We fancy apps that make our lives easier. Who doesn’t? We invest a lot of time researching and trying out new apps to see how well they fit our business. So far we have found a few SVN tools that are worth mentioning. Note: some of these are Apple-specific.

  • VersionsApp: A high-quality desktop application that allows one to manage repositories locally for streamlined management of code.
  • BeanstalkApp: A sweet as online SVN storage service to host repositories full of code, revisions, and a great interface for management.
  • Coda App: A quality code editor that integrates with SVN
  • TextMate: Another quality code editor with SVN integration
  • MAMP: A personal Mac server with Apache, Mysql and PHP
  • VirtualHostX: A virtual hosting utility that works well with MAMP
  • VirtualBox: A sweet virtualization product to run multiple operating systems
  • Spoon.net: A browser-compatibility testing tool

Those of you who are already familiar with SVN know that there is obviously much more to rave about. This post is intended to be a simplified “business use-case” for Magento SVN usage and explain why it is a Magento best practice. Please chime in in the comments below with other suggestions for everyone to benefit from!

How to Create Reusable Apple Mail Templates [video]

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UPDATE: This process works for macOS High Sierra Mail App (v11.x). It also works in prior versions down to v3.x. Apple has removed the Stationery feature from Apple Mail in macOS Mojave. This process will not work if you’ve upgrade to Mojave, but here is a work-around you can explore.

Do you ever find yourself writing the same general email over and over? I’ve found myself spending a lot of time responding to initial questions and project requests from potential clients. Usually it takes a few emails or phone calls to uncover the project’s details to a level where the client feels understood and our team feels comfortable with scope and timeline. But the first email is usually some variation of the same thing: who we are, why we are contacting you, and what we suggest as a next step.  Your role might be totally different, but I suspect everyone has some message that they reuse.

If you use Apple’s Mail app here is how (text and video instructions below) you can save yourself time by creating reusable Apple Mail templates (aka Stationary).

Create Mail app templates in less than 2 minutes (video)

Four Easy Steps to Create Apple Mail Templates

  1. Create a new email message. Add the template that you often reuse as you’d like it to appear each time you load the template (just like a signature line). You can also add dummy text to delete later, if you wish.
  2. When you’re satisfied with your work, choose Save as Stationery from Mail’s File menu. The program will prompt you to name your template.
    file_and_menubar-300x249
  3. When you want to load your template, create a new message and click the Show Stationery button. You’ll see the Apple templates, organized in folders. (You may need to scroll down to see all the folders.) At the bottom of the list is a new folder, Custom, where your template resides. Any additional templates you create will be stored in the Custom folder as well.
  4. Select the Custom folder, click on the icon for your custom template, and the template appears, ready for you to add new text. When you’re done writing your new message, send like any other email.
    Apple Mail - Show Stationary

I hope this helps you! Do you have any other Apple Mail tips for templates? Please share in the comments below.

Is your ecommerce platform stable?

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Let’s face it, some platforms seem like a house of cards. One wrong move and everything goes down. Watch this video to see what happens when someone makes one wrong move with a forklift.

Too bad these guys don’t have SVN for disaster recovery.

SSL in a Nutshell

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Clients frequently ask us for Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate recommendations. There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding SSL – everything from why they’re needed, how they work, what they do and how to install them. Let me demystify some misconceptions and answer common questions in today’s post so that you walk away with a better understanding of SSL in general.

Why SSL is Necessary for eCommerce Stores

More and more online shoppers are becoming keenly aware of the affects of identity theft, and thus most know to look for a secure connection when shopping online. Without a secure connection, you run the risk of losing customers. Shoppers want to know that the website they’re on is safe and can be trusted before they give out personal information or complete a transaction. SSL provides that security both visually in the browser and functionally behind the scenes. I began to worry about my privacy regarding my private information a few years ago, when I realized how easy it was to steal my information. Choosing the right VPN service for the needs you have is not easy but, https://internetetsecurite.ch/ has really helped me to stay secure online.

How SSL Works

I’m a visual person, so I found this graphical representation of SSL to be very helpful in understanding what’s going on behind the scenes without getting too far in the weeds with technical jargon. (Thanks to the folks at enom.com for this.)

Who’s who in the SSL world?

There are many providers out there, but three main players lead the SSL world: Verisign, Comodo, and GeoTrust. I’m confident you’ve at least seen or heard of at least one of these players. All three are perfectly fine and trustworthy providers. We have have not had a problem using any of these three providers with our customers at Elas. Choosing an SSL provider should be based on client-specific needs, so I recommend you check out this article at eHow for some tips on selecting a provider.

What is extended validation (EV)?

Think of EV as an add-on for SSL. EV is what triggers the address bar to turn green in some browsers while on a secure site. Not all browsers do the same thing, but each browser has some special visual element that indicate you are on a site with an SSL that has extended validation. Studies have shown EV to be very effective in building trust with customers. However, EV doesn’t come cheap. You can expect to pay at least $450/year for a quality certificates with EV, which can also be masked with a VPN, that are also used for different services like streaming as the disney plus which is marked as one of the most popular service now a days, yo can choose netflix امريكي to watch your favorite movies and series.

OK, so why are some way cheaper than others?

The cost of certificates varies quite a bit depending on a number of factors such as how the certificate is validated, warranty coverage, wildcard certs, brand, etc. The leading driver of cost difference is how validation occurs. There are two main ways to validate a certificate.

  1. By domain. Only verify the domain ownership of the purchaser, and thus have much faster turnaround times since none of the additional information needs to be verified. Sometimes available for implementation within minutes.
  2. By organization & extended validation. Requires the certificate authority (the company issuing the certificate, such as GeoTrust or VeriSign) to verify the purchaser’s business and their authority to purchase a certificate on behalf of that company. These are considered higher assurance certificates and are generally perceived as more trustworthy.

What benefit is there to purchasing a higher assurance certificate?

Low assurance certificates that perform domain-only verification encrypt just the connection. Higher assurance certificates perform the same encryption and provide peace of mind to customers by assuring them that the entire site belongs to a legitimate business, still we always suggest people to use a Virtual Private Network, for those who haven’t used one yet they can try AirVPN and use an AirVPN Coupon to get a discount. Google’s Android operating system has the largest installed base of smartphones around the globe with more than a billion daily active users – so it’s no surprise that has the best Android VPN apps which support the OS.

There you have it – SSL in a nutshell! This is by no means an exhaustive dissertation, but it should equip you with a working knowledge of the SSL technology that is a necessity with today’s ecommerce sites. We’d enjoy any comments or feedback from your own SSL experience and expertise. Cheers!