Tutorials for Magento and Joomla! - Yireo

MageBridge 1.7 Release Notes

Version 1.7 was released in Oktober 2011 but its actual features have been made available for a long time already in 1.6 through intermediate builds. The prime directive of this release was to add more features and functionality for both developers as webdesigners.

Support for Joomla! 1.7 and Nooku Server

When Joomla! 1.7 was released, we actually had almost no work to make MageBridge compatible with it: The extensions were already properly adjusted for Joomla! 1.6, and supporting Joomla! 1.7 was mostly a textual change. We decided also to pick up on Nooku Server, which needed some minor modifications in queries, but since this is running fine, we can now announce that MageBridge is fully compatible with Nooku Server as well. It should be noted that MageBridge is not written in Nooku-code, it's only compatible with it.

Integration with ZOO and FLEXIcontent

The Magento frontend offers huge capabilities for building a flexible catalog. But when you want to use Magento primarily for its checkout-features (payment gateways, advanced shipping options, tax calculations, discounts, etcetera), then the Magento catalog might be a little bit too much for you. Instead you could decide to build your own catalog in Joomla!, and simply point to the Magento addtocart-URL when checking out.

It requires a bit more work (PHP knowledge is definitely needed), but the end-result is that you have simplified the catalog-structure, and perhaps even improved performance as a side-effect as well. Instead of using custom PHP-code, you could also use CCKs like ZOO and FLEXIcontent. MageBridge now offers various content-elements that allow you to easily add Magento blocks or product-URLs to your ZOO or FLEXIcontent content-items. This eases up the job to build a Joomla!-based catalog tremenduously. Support for K2 will be added in MageBridge 1.8.

Syncing Joomla! usergroups with Magento customergroups

It sounds like a simple thing, but MageBridge was still missing out on this feature: Linking a Joomla! usergroup to a Magento customergroup. The reason why this was still missing in MageBridge is basically because the concepts of Joomla! and Magento are in different when it comes to usergroups: Joomla! uses the groups primarily for authorization rules, but Magento primarily uses it for tax rules - two different rules. However, various third party extensions have come alive in Magento that apply authorization rules also to Magento customergroups.

This asked for new features in MageBridge as well. You could already determine the default Magento customergroup for new users that were not created in the standalone Magento frontend, but the MageBridge frontend instead. Now, MageBridge 1.7 also adds the option to make a relation between a Joomla! usergroup and Magento customergroup. Let's say you have a Magento store that you want to make visible for the customergroup MagentoSecret only (private shopping). But the rules under which you add a new user to that private store are actually delt with in Joomla! (for instance, using MageBridge Product Connectors, or membership extensions, or user points). What you want is, that as soon as an existing user is moved from Joomla! usergroup JoomlaPublic to JoomlaSecret, the equivalent Magento customer is also moved to the customergroup MagentoSecret. The new feature of MageBridge 1.7 - Usergroup Relations - allows you to do exactly that. Both from Joomla! to Magento, as well as from Magento to Joomla!.

Undo-functionality in product-connectors

This might have been a bit of a confusing functionality: MageBridge Product Connectors allow you to perform certain functions when a Magento product has been sold: For instance, you could automatically subscribe the customer to a specific Joomla! newsletter, or add the customer to a DOCman download group. Memberships is a term that comes in mind, when dealing with MageBridge Product Connectors, with one exception: Product Connectors are only run when the product is purchased, while a membership also requires some extra actions when the membership (or subscription) ends.

Tools like OSE MSC already offer this membership-functionality (automatic expiry, reminder mails), and it was the question whether MageBridge would replicate this behaviour. We decided not to - MageBridge is a bridge, not a membership tool. Providing memberships would require so many extra features that have nothing to do with bridging, so this was skipped. However, every MageBridge Product Connector now also supports undo-functionality, meaning that the performed action when a product is purchased (newsletter subscription for instance) could also be reversed (the customer is unsubscribed from the newsletter). But the mechanism that should call this functionality is still something that needs to be customized through a third party extension.

MageBridge virtual appliance

To help people set up a proper hosting environment (as a testing site, trial or VPS-hosting) we also released a MageBridge virtual appliance, based on TurnKey Linux. The VMDK-file of this appliance can be used to setup a virtual machine using VMware or VirtualBox, or setup a VPS-server. In both cases, the tuning of MySQL, PHP and Apache is already undertaken and the installations of Joomla! and Magento that the appliance contains, are already preconfigured for easy setup of MageBridge.

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

Upgrading to MageBridge 1.7 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: Google Analytics module optimized for MageBridge
• NEW: Integration with ZOO
• NEW: Integration with FLEXIcontent
• NEW: Support for Joomla! 1.7
• NEW: Support for Nooku Server
• NEW: Integrating Magento usergroups and Joomla! usergroups
• NEW: Undo-functionality in product-connectors
• DEV: Plugin to load Magento API-classes inside Joomla! 1.6 plugins

Known bugs / limitations

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