10 Most Common Issues Magento Newbies Face & How to Fix Them

Starting a new online business on the Magento eCommerce platform can be an ideal decision, especially for those who have just started off their eCommerce development journey. More and more business owners, merchants, and retailers are moving towards Magento to develop a highly-interactive online store, thanks to its huge collection of themes, extensions, and built-in eCommerce functionality.

Despite all these advantages, a user faces many problems while developing a Magento web store, especially the ones which are new to Magento. Although you can easily solve these issues if you know the right process, there are some complicated procedures that need in-depth skills such as setting up a global notification area, registering a new module, and even knowing the best tools for Magento. But if you have the details of solutions, you can swiftly deal with the common flaws that almost every newbie Magento user faces.

Here are the 10 most common issues faced by a newbie while developing a Magento web store. We will also share the solution for each problem to help you create a professional-looking eCommerce site.

1. Configuring Magento with a new domain

Most of the beginners face issues in configuring their Magento web store with a new domain. The problem occurs when you need to change your configured Magento with a new one. Well, you can solve this by following the two simple ways:

• A. Edit the database of your Magento store

  First, navigate from your cPanel to phpMyAdmin. Choose your Magento database, identify the table called core_config_data, and click it. Now edit the two fields of the table by clicking the Browse tab: web/unsecure/base_url

  Click on the pen icon to tweak your old domain name with the new one and click on the Go button to save the changes.

• B. Delete the Magento Cache

  You can fix many issues in Magento by clearing or deleting your cache.

  For that, you need to delete the cache folder situated in your Magento root directory /var/cache. So, you need to visit your Magento admin System >Cache Management and remove all the cache.

2. Resetting Magento admin password

There are many newbie users who forget their admin password and then struggle in accessing the backend of their site. To solve this problem, one can change the admin password of their Magento store with a new one.

For that, visit your cPanel > phpMyAdmin>Select your Magento database> find the admin_user table. Now change your old password with a new one and don't forget to add the password in MD5 function.

3. Enabling search engine friendly URLs

If you are finding obstacles in enabling search engine friendly URL in Magento, then you should consider the following process:

• Log in to your Magento admin area
• Click on the configuration button
• Now click on "Web" on left panel
• Hit the Search Engines Optimization tab, and turn on the Use Web Server Rewrites by marking “Yes”.
• Click on “Save Config” button to enable Search engine friendly URLs in Magento.

4. Redirecting Magento to access via www

As a Magento store owner, you should redirect your web visitors to access your eCommerce site only via www (such as http://www.example.com). It is essential for getting visibility on Google and other search engines.

Magento makes it super easy to do it. You just need to access your .htaccess file located in your Magento root. Under this, locate the RewriteEngine on the line and add the following code right after it:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mywebstore.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebstore.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Once you are done with this, you can save the .htaccess file > login to Magento admin page > System > Config menu > click the web button (from the left panel).

Now click on the unsecure tab to tweak the Base URL option from “http://example.com” to “http://www.example.com”. Then, click on the Save Config button to access your Magento store through www.

5. Disabling compare products functionality

You should disable the compare products functionality if you want to get most of your Magento store. All you need to do is to trail the following steps:

• Visit your Magento root folder and edit the app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Helper/Product/Compare.php and tweak the following code:

public function getAddUrl($product){return $this->_getUrl(’catalog/product_compare/add’, $this->_getUrlParams($product));}

With:

public function getAddUrl($product){//return $this->_getUrl(’catalog/product_compare/add’, $this->_getUrlParams($product)); return false;}

Also, edit ./app/design/frontend/base/default/layout/catalog.xml (note: write your theme name instead of defult) and replace the following code:

<block type="catalog/product_compare_sidebar" before="cart_sidebar" name="catalog.compare.sidebar" template="catalog/product/compare/sidebar.phtml"/>

With:

<!-- <block type="catalog/product_compare_sidebar" before="cart_sidebar" name="catalog.compare.sidebar" template="catalog/product/compare/sidebar.phtml"/> -->

Now, clear the Magneto cache from your admin area >System > Cache Management.

6. Magento speed optimization

Most of the novice Magento users overlook the speed of their Magento store and keep on losing their potential customers and conversion rates. If you want to generate quality leads, you need to optimize your store's speed for better performance.

You can improve the speed of your Magento store by enabling its Compilation function. This will increase the performance between 25% to 50% on page loads.

To enable the Magento Compilation function, go to your admin area > System >Tools > Compilation > click on Run Compilation Process.

7. Setting up a blog in Magento

Although Magento doesn't come with an inbuilt functionality to set up a blog, you can use a custom extension to create a professional looking blog for your web store. A blog can accelerate your digital marketing campaign and give you an opportunity to grow your business.

You can find a lot of extensions in Magento Connect that will help you set up a blog in minutes. Magento Blog – Community Edition is one of the most recommended free extensions for the same purpose.

After installing the extension, you will see an extra section on the top of your admin area called Blog. You can change the blog settings, add, delete or create posts from there itself.

8. Incorporating a "Contact Us" form in your store

Magento has a contact form functionality by default. However, a link to a contact form is usually displayed on the footer of your Magento store, but you can add it on any page of your store. To do this, consider the following steps:

• Log in to the admin area
• Access CMS > Pages
• Choose a page that you want to edit and create a new page.
• Now paste the following line by making the use of HTML option of WYSIWYG editor:

<!– CONTACT FORM CODE BEGIN–>{{block type='core/template' name='contactForm' template='contacts/form.phtml'}}<!– CONTACT FORM CODE END–>

Save the changes to see the contact form page on the page you want.

9. “Access Denied” error in Magento admin area

You should fix the “Access Denied” issue if you are unable to access the backend of your Magento store. I would recommend you to log out from your admin area and then log in again.

If the above method fails, you can reset the admin privileges. You can do this by visiting the Magento admin area > System > Permissions > Roles > Administrators.

Now hit the Role Resources option from the left menu and check that Resource Access is set to All. Save the changes by clicking on “Save Role” button.

10. Adding a Custom Users Group

Adding new users group in Magento is another common issue encountered by beginners. Well, you can add a custom user group by following these steps:

Login to your Magento admin area > Customers > Customer Groups > Add New Customer Group

Once your customer gets registered, you can edit the group the person belongs to from the Magento Customer > Manage Customers. Hit the Edit link opposite to the customer and tweak the group from the Account information > Customer Group. Now click on “Save Customer” button.

You can even set the discount from Promotions > Catalog Price Rules > Add New Rule. Under the Customer Group, choose the groups of customers for whom the discount is valid. Set rule and conditions and save the changes.

Conclusion

Developing and managing a Magento web store is a crucial task, particularly for startups. There are many obstacles you may encounter and this blog post included all the possible errors with their solutions that you might face while working on Magento store.

Author's Bio

Emily is an experienced CMS developer and a passionate blogger. She is currently employed at a Magento Web Development Company, HireMagentoGeeks. She enjoys writing articles on web development, web design, CMS etc.