Version 1.3 was released in early February 2010 but actually its features have been implemented already for several months. This version primarily adds a Content Plugin and support for Magento^TM 1.4, but other minor features were also implemented.

Content plugin

The MageBridge^TM Content Plugin takes up Joomla! content, sends it to Magento and let's Magento parse it just like it was Magento content. This allows for Magento markup tags to be inserted into a Joomla!^TM article, for instance to create Magento blocks, links, URLs and more.

Magento 1.4 support

At the time of writing Magento 1.4 Stable was not yet released, but MageBridge is compatible with Magento 1.4 Beta and the stable release will most likely not cause any problems. Magento 1.4 introduces the concept of widgets, which are also supported by MageBridge. Also, a specific TinyMCE-plugin was introduced within Magento which makes it easy to edit content to Magento CMS-pages but also add widgets with a few mouseclicks. This functionality will be offered as a JCE-editor plugin in Joomla! within the next months.

Upgrade procedure

In short:

• Upgrade MageBridge in both Joomla! as Magento
• Open the MageBridge settings in Joomla! and save them
• Take another look at the MageBridge Quick Start Guide

Upgrades to MageBridge 1.3 should be painless using the Update-pages in both Joomla! and Magento. Please note that if you upgrade the Joomla! extensions, you MUST update the Magento extension – and vice versa. Also note that there are new configuration options in both the MageBridge settings in Joomla! as the MageBridge settings in Magento. The online MageBridge Quick Start Guide is updated to include these new settings.

If errors occur, it could be that the Magento extension is not updated properly, due to wrong file permissions. This issue occurs mostly in hosting environments where the system umask is not tuned for usage with the PHP CGI-configuration. See the last chapters of our modified MageBridge Troubleshooting Guide for more information.

Features

• NEW: Content Plugin
• NEW: Support for Magento 1.4 Beta
• NEW: Support for Magento 1.4 widgets
• NEW: Newsletter block module
• FIX: Various fixes with SSL redirection
• NEW: Performance enhancements regarding multiple bridge-requests and caching
• FIX: Smarter handling of SEF URLs within Magento
• DEV: Cleanup of the code (phpDoc, PHP5.3)
• NEW: Patches for RocketTheme templates (sold separately)
• FIX: Updates for compatibility Joomla! 1.6 (work in progress)

Known bugs / limitations

See our official list of known bugs and/or limitations.