General News

With MageBridge^TM we have targeted at flexibility, and because connecting Joomla!^TM and Magento brings up so many possibilities, we have not thought of all possibilities yet. Once in a while we bump into new features, that are actually part of Magento^TM Enterprise Edition, but can be rebuilt using MageBridge without extra costs. Let's see some of these features.

We really enjoyed JAndBeyond 2010 in Wiesbaden, and when we heard that JAndBeyond 2011 would take place in the Netherlands, we were excited right away (it's our home-country). This important developers-congres will take place in early May 2011 in Kerkrade, and surely, it will be worth visiting it - so write it down in your agenda.

A new month, a new template from YOOtheme made compatible for MageBridge^TM by adding a specific template-patch. The new template from YOOtheme Noble. The patches for MageBridge are now available in our Yireo^TM Shop.

Software needs hardware, and when looking at a heavier software-application like Magento^TM, you also need heavier hardware. But is buying a 16-CPU 128Gb-RAM server enough? Or do you need to do something else as well? When working in the field, we came to the conclusion that a lot of hosting environments are not optimized to make use of the underlying hardware - this is a waste of money.

The RocketTheme Omnicron template is now made available for MageBridge^TM as well - the corresponding template-patch is available in our Yireo^TM Shop. Omnicron, the September 2010 Template Club release, is the ideal product template with the new RokFeatureTable module With our MageBridge template-patch you can now also use it together with MageBridge.

Past weeks, we made various excellent YOOtheme templates compatible for MageBridge^TM by adding a specific template-patch. The new templates include YOOtheme Enterprise, YOOtheme Royal Plaza and YOOtheme Symphony. The patches for MageBridge are now available in our Yireo^TM Shop.

After months of hard work, we decided to increases the major number of MageBridge from 1.4 to 1.5. It's a small change, but actually it falls together with the introduction of a new caching ability in MageBridge: Forget about Magento^TM Enterprise - here comes MageBridge^TM!

In August 2010, not only the RT Zephyr template was released, but also another free RT template: RocketTheme Grunge. Having released already a MageBridge^TM-patch for Zephyr, we also made patch for this new RocketTheme Grunge template available.

A demo of this new template can be seen here, while the patch can be ordered without charge in our Yireo^TM Shop.

The RocketTheme Zephyr template is now made available for MageBridge^TM as well - the corresponding template-patch is available in our Yireo^TM Shop. By default, this August 2010 template gives a dark but professional ambience to your site. With our MageBridge template-patch you can now also use it together with MageBridge.

On August 5th 2010 (one week ago) we held a Joomla! 1.6 Bootcamp in the Netherlands. The Dutch day was ment for implementors, webdesigners and webdevelopers who want to see what has changed in Joomla!^TM 1.6 Bootcamp and how to migrate. All our guys gave presentations on various topics - some technical, some very technical. Here's a short review.

While we spend a lot of time on software development (MageBridge^TM, Magento^TM, Joomla!^TM), we always try to get some extra time to study new technologies - and see how we can adept them again in our development. Last months, our design guru Hans was busy with CSS3 and also came up with our Yireo^TM logo ... without images.

Overriding the default behaviour in Magento is cool. But if it is done too many times, you might get into trouble. We were playing with some default grid-settings in the Magento backend, and found suddenly a conflict between three Magento^TM modules trying to apply the same trick.

One of the team members of Yireo^TM, Ray Bogman, found some additional time to build his own webshop - Wild Hibiscus. The Dutch shop focusses solely on the hibiscus-flower, which originates from Australia, which could be dropped in a glass of champagne - giving it a reddish color and a playful romantic effect: Ideal for weddings.

Remember the trouble we all had when moving from PHP4 to PHP5? Well, the trouble is not over. In the field we've seen hundreds of website-owners that make good effort into keeping their Magento^TM and Joomla!^TM installations up to date, while their PHP-version is over 4 years old. Saying you need PHP 5.2 is not good enough anymore, the real question is how often do you update your PHP-install.

The name itself is already a mouthful: The shopping cart price rules in Magento^TM allow you to modify the price listed in the shopping cart, based on certain rules. These rules can get quiet complicated - this individual example shows you how weird it can get.

Around 1 year ago, MageBridge^TM was first released to the public. With it, we not only brought you a brand new extension with exiting new features - we actually opened up a whole new market: Bringing the power of Magento^TM to the Joomla! public, and bringingthe flexibility of Joomla!^TM to Magento administrators.

Once in a while we pick up arguments on why to use open source software or not. In most cases, open source is ment to protect customers - for instance, so they easily can switch from one supplied to another. But recently we heard an argument that closed source was choosen over open source ... to protect the customer ... from themselves. Huh?

One of the weirder (but cooler) tricks of MageBridge^TM is that you can parse Joomla! content as if it was Magento content, and vice versa. Both Magento^TM and Joomla! use mechanisms to filter content before it is being displayed on screen, and this opens up for a lot of opportunities. For instance, you can load a Joomla!^TM module within your Magento product-description. Let's see how.

Another cool template from YOOtheme is now made compatible with MageBridge^TM: With our new template-patch, the YOOtheme Explorer template still looks smooth when combined with the Magento^TM Default Theme.

It dropped by a couple of weeks ago in a blog: Developers of the Microsoft IIS team contributed code to the Joomla! project to integrate their WINCACHE product in Joomla!^TM 1.6. But what does it mean?

Happy to release yet two more template-patches for YOOtheme templates. This time it is the turn for YOOtheme Intro and YOOtheme Studio, which - thanks to our MageBridge^TM patches - allow for seemless integration of the Magento^TM Default Theme. Building a slick webshop was never easier.

While we develop MageBridge^TM and other extensions, we also take a few jobs in the field once in a while - mainly to get the practical experience out of our own extensions. With MageBridge, combining Joomla!^TM and Magento^TM not only gives a lot of flexibility but also requires a solid understanding of both platforms. Here are a few tips and tricks from our walk in the park.

With Joomla! 1.6 Stable coming closer and closer, we found it time for a Joomla! 1.6 Bootcamp. In the past, we've been giving bootcamps in The Netherlands on subjects like Joomla! programming, templating, 1.0 to 1.5 migrations and security. Now it's time to meet Joomla!^TM 1.6.