Tutorials for Magento and Joomla! - Yireo

After a Magento upgrade, the site doesn't work

Magento has a habit of changing the underlying API a lot. Because MageBridge makes heavy use of this API, an upgrade of Magento might crash MageBridge. If you have just upgraded Magento and MageBridge stops working, please follow the procedure below.

First make sure the problem is not related to Magento itself. If so, you need to post on the Magento community-forums, not the Yireo MageBridge forum. If it's MageBridge related, login to the Magento Admin Panel, navigate to Cache Management and click on all the buttons on this page. It sounds silly, but after an upgrade we want to make sure we're not troubleshooting a cached situation.

If the problem is still there, post it quickly on the dedicated Yireo MageBridge forum on this site. We will act as soon as possible. Perhaps we're already on the issue, but if we're not, please post any PHP Fatal Errors that occur on your screen or in your Apache error-logs. With debug-messages like PHP Fatal Errors we can solve problems much faster, and a patch will be available within hours.

Is allow_url_fopen needed?

The MageBridge API uses CURL when transferring content (for instance, from Joomla! to Magento or vice versa). Therefor PHP CURL-support is a requirement. Since MageBridge version 1.6, the PHP-option allow_url_fopen is no longer needed.

How do I upgrade MageBridge?

Both in Joomla! as Magento, the MageBridge extension has its own upgrade-mechanism. Just by navigating in the backend to the MageBridge Settings, you will find a button Update which just needs clicking to initialize an upgrade. It is easy and fast.

Do not upgrade the MageBridge extension in Magento using the MagentoConnect manager. Under normal circumstances the upgrade will fail, but reinstalling the extension from within MagentoConnect will not reinstall the full bridge-extension, but instead overwrite it with the MageBridge Installer.

Unable to find update for com_magebridge on local filesystem

When you try to upgrade MageBridge in Joomla!, your Joomla! Installer might download a corrupt package. In the end this causes various errors, one of which is Unable to find update for com_magebridge on local filesystem. If you run into this error, make sure to cleanup the Joomla! tmp-path. It might be that the corrupt archive is stuck on your filesystem.

MageBridge in Magento fails to upgrade

Make sure the permissions on all files and directories are correct. The webuser tries to install a new MageBridge package, but therefor needs write-access to various directories in Magento. If Magento works, set all the file-permissions the same as the main index.php file.

Also check the Apache ErrorLog for any PHP Fatal Errors. Also make sure that your hosting environment lives up to the MageBridge System Requirements. For instance, Windows is not officially supported by Magento and causes problems with the Magento Downloader application.

Another thing to check is if the Magento Downloader is actually working. After a default installation of Magento it is not yet initialized, and therefor updates are not received. As a first step, you should install the latest packages in Magento (key: magento-core/Mage_All_Latest).

If this still fails, we are probably not capable of helping you out. Instead, as a last resort, you can always apply a file-patch of all the MageBridge files within Magento. The file-patch can be downloaded by logging into your Yireo Account and download the file-patch under Other Downloads. Just extract the archive and copy all files to the Magento root. Don't forget to refresh the Magento cache.

Just after installation, I get a blank page

There are a few reasons why you get a blank page after the installation of MageBridge. If you have installed the MageBridge Installer for Joomla! or for Magento and the screen turns white, most likely your hosting environment does not live up to the standards of MageBridge. Most likely you will also not be able to run Magento. Check your webservers error-log (Apache ErrorLog) for more information.

If you have already upgraded the MageBridge Installer within Joomla!, make sure you have also upgraded the MageBridge Installer within Magento. MageBridge requires both sides to run the full version.

Magento still shows my old XML-RPC settings?

Within the MageBridge settings in Magento, the XML-RPC host is shown in a disabled text-field. These settings can be seen as a default, but this default is under normal briding circumstances never used.

However, it might be cleaner to refresh these settings when you're moving from an old to a new hosting environment. To do this, navigate to "CMS > MageBridge settings" and hit the button "Reset XML-RPC". After this, just access MageBridge from the new Joomla! site once, and the new XML-RPC settings will automatically be included.

How to install MageBridge on Magento Enterprise?

Because Magento Enterprise does not have an installer, installing MageBridge as a MagentoConnect package (or PEAR package) is not possible. Use the procedure to manually install or upgrade MageBridge in Magento instead.

How to manually install/upgrade MageBridge in Magento?

In your Yireo Account you can navigate to Downloads and download a MageBridge file-patch for Magento. Extract those files in Magento and refresh the cache. This will install and/or upgrade all files related to MageBridge. Upgrading a Magento module like this, is fully supported.

How to manually install/upgrade MageBridge in Joomla!?

In your Yireo Account you can navigate to Downloads and download a MageBridge file-patch for Joomla!. This will upgrade all files related to MageBridge. Note however that Joomla! 1.5 does not support upgrading extensions like this, so none of the upgrade-commands will be run. Instead, use the MageBridge Upgrade page in the Joomla! backend to upgrade all extensions manually. If your hosting environment is badly setup with file permissions, you will need to fix that first.

The Magento Downloader does not work properly

You should note that the Magento Downloader is not part of MageBridge, and therefor we can not provide support for it. If you have moved your Magento site to another folder (or webserver) or if you have upgraded Magento, it might be that your Magento Downloader fails to work properly. Common fixes are to remove the folders downloader/pearlib/cache/ and downloader/pearlib/download/. Also, make sure the right paths are mentioned in the file downloader/pearlib/pear.ini. Instead of editing that file you can also remove that file and reinitialize the Magento Downloader.

How to upgrade MageBridge in Magento CE 1.5?

With Magento CE 1.5, the old Magento Downloader application does not work anymore as it used to do under Magento 1.4. This causes problems with the MageBridge extension that currently depends on the MagentoConnect architecture to update itself. For now, upgrade MageBridge using the manual method (through a patch). Future updates of MageBridge will include a new update-mechanism.

The 'community' channel is not installed

Magento CE 1.5 might throw this error-message at you, when trying to install the MageBridge extension through the Magento Connect Manager (or Magento Downloader). It means that the Magento Connect Manager has not been properly setup yet - something that might happen with some hosting environments. It's not an issue of MageBridge, but of Magento. The official solution to this is to run the Magento setup-command over SSH:

chmod 755 mage
./mage mage-setup .

This needs to be run over SSH (shell-access). If you are unfamiliar with SSH, ask your system administrator to do this for you. If your system administrator is unable to help, there is no other option than to skip using the Magento Connect Manager (because it can't be setup properly). MageBridge can always be installed through patch, as a good alternative.

PHP-extension zip (class ZipArchive) is not installed

When trying to upgrade MageBridge within Magento, you might face this error. The PHP-extension zip is required for extract the update-archives downloaded to your Magento site by the MageBridge extension. If you do not have this PHP-extension installed, you will not be able to use the MageBridge Update page to keep your MageBridge extension up-to-date.

Either ask your system administrator to install ZIP-support or use the MageBridge patch-file to manually upgrade MageBridge in Magento. If this error still occurs, when the PHP-extension zip is available, it probably indicates that the extension is strongly updated. 

How to upgrade the trial to the full open source version?

When you have purchased a valid MageBridge license, you can upgrade your existing trial-version to the full open source version. After changing the license-key in Joomla!, you should be able to update MageBridge using its Update Manager - the update button should become unlocked after entering a valid license key. Alternatively you can download the full MageBridge component from the Downloads page instead, or use the MageBridge Installer to reinstall MageBridge, or use the patch-file to manually upgrade all files.