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The eCommerce market is a constantly evolving digital space with merchants striving to accommodate varying customer needs, crucial for business scalability. To achieve this, e-store owners are always on the lookout for new features or modules to customize their stores and enhance the customer’s shopping experience.

Popular eCommerce platforms constantly revamp their technology to stay up-to-date with the latest features and improve security, and Magento is no exception.

Magento is among the best open-source platform currently available. It is a highly flexible platform with numerous built-in features that allow merchants to meet all their business requirements.

Why Shouldn’t Merchants Stay on Magento 1?

For uninitiated readers, Magento 1 reached its end of life (EOL) on June 30, 2020. What does this imply?

Adobe, the parent company of Magento, has officially ended support for Magento 1.x. This means that the platform will no longer receive official updates or security patches.

Merchants on Magento 1 are now responsible for maintaining their site’s security and PCI DSS compliance. Failure to do so will make their eCommerce site highly vulnerable to cyberattacks and security issues. In addition, there are numerous other implications associated with Magento 1.

Payment Gateways

Perhaps the biggest drawback of staying on Magento 1 is that you are no longer PCI compliant, a set of security standards most payment providers abide by. Most payment providers don’t support businesses that are PCI non-compliant.

As a result, you’ll have limited payment methods to offer, resulting in a drop in sales.

Potential Security Risks

Lack of security upgrades compromises your website’s security, exposing you to potential security threats. Besides, hackers are always looking for susceptible stores without the latest security patches, so the risks are real.

You can still opt for regular security checks, but the cost associated with such audits is higher than a Magento version upgrade.

Functionality Issues

Most Magento store owners rely on the latest plug-ins and extensions to enhance site functionality. However, with Magento 1 EOL, you are likely running outdated extensions, resulting in stability and performance issues.

These functionality issues negatively impact the end-user experience, reducing conversions and revenues.

What are the Benefits of Upgrading to Magento 2?

Magento 2 allows merchants to set up an elegant storefront by easily integrating with a plethora of extensions. The following part highlights some benefits that make Magento 2 the preferred choice of eCommerce businesses.

Seamless Customization Options for Developers

Upgrading to the latest Magento version offers countless viable features for developers to enhance store functionalities. Developers can leverage advanced tools, including Google Analytics, BigCommerce Analytics, and Inspect Let, automating processes, tracking product availability, sales, and more.

Improved Performance for an Exceptional Experience

The latest Magento version comes with an improved platform code, thereby offering numerous benefits for users. These benefits include quick website loading time, improved stability, and better optimization.

A fast website load time offers convenience and ease to the visitors

These factors boost the store’s efficiency and performance, increasing conversions and revenues.

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Improved Admin Interface

Magento 1 store owners often found the original admin interface confusing, especially the first-time users. However, Magento 2 offers a highly responsive, intuitive, and user-friendly interface. Users can easily navigate the entire store catalog, irrespective of the screen resolution or device.

Seamless Checkout Process

A complex checkout process is a primary reason why many customers abandon shopping carts. To reduce this, Magento 2 has reduced its checkout process to only two easy steps instead of six. These two steps, including order review and shipping and payments, simplify the checkout process.

In addition, Magento 2 offers guest checkout options, eliminating the hassle of registering and logging in. These options allow users to control their entire checkout process, improving the overall customer experience and conversion rate.

Security Enhancements

Cyberattacks and malware vulnerability are a major concern for store owners. However, the latest Magento version includes built-in security patches with over 40 security enhancements. These patches are well-equipped to fix major bugs and loopholes while restricting malware and hacking attacks.

While upgrading from Magento 1.x to Magento 2 is the best option, the process can be pretty challenging, especially for store owners with zero or less technical expertise. However, we’ve prepared a comprehensive checklist to help merchants upgrade considering Magento 2 version upgrade. Following this actionable checklist will ensure a swift and hassle-free version upgrade.

Magento 2 Upgrade Checklist

There are a few fundamental aspects that Magento store owners must validate before the upgrade process. They should always opt for the latest, stable Magento version for upgrading. In addition, merchants must take note of the changes/customizations available with the new version.

Furthermore, there must be an appropriate testing environment/staging website for validating the update and store functionality.

The following part contains pre-upgrade basics that are essential for a successful Magento 2 version upgrade.

Audit Your Existing eCommerce Website

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To keep pace with the latest trends, store owners need to implement the latest functionality and capabilities constantly. Implementing these additional capabilities is an ongoing process that increases the overall store complexity over time.

Hence, it’s vital to review your current store’s customization, configuration, extensions, and user experience before upgrading. Considering these factors will highly impact your project upgrade scope, cost, and effort.

The following part illustrates how merchants can classify their Magento version upgrade into three categories.

Simple Implementation Criteria

• Single Magento website without major customizations.
• Fewer data to upgrade, such as orders, product catalog, and customers
• ≤ 5 extensions and 0-4 integrations

Medium Implementation Criteria

• Up to 3 eCommerce websites with simple user customization
• Data for upgrade include orders, customers, product catalog with some customizations
• ≤ 10 extensions and 3-5 integrations

Complex Implementation Criteria

• 3+ Magento websites with comprehensive user customization
• Data include orders, customers, product catalog, and custom field types
• 10+ extensions and 5+ integrations

This information will help you determine your project complexity and plan your upgrade accordingly.

Audit Magento 2 Templates for SEO and Mobile Responsiveness

Considering mobile commerce (M-Commerce) makes up 54% of all eCommerce sales, merchants must prioritize mobile responsiveness.

With Magento 2, you enjoy the option to choose from numerous underlying themes that offer a framework for SEO and mobile optimization. Besides, the themes are highly responsive and user-friendly.

For these reasons, Magento 2 design templates drastically reduce efforts and costs associated with front-end UI/UX design.

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Explore the Magento 2 Marketplace for New or Upgraded Extensions

Another vital aspect that eCommerce owners must prioritize is extensions. These software programs add features to your Magento store, expanding its native capabilities.

Most online store owners tailor these programs to supplement or replace custom development depending on your business needs. In addition, extensions can be integrated with other systems for enhancing the overall user experience, including site navigation, checkout page optimization, and payment processing.

It’s advisable to start with an in-depth analysis of your existing extensions. This allows identifying and retaining critical extensions that add value to your store. Besides, evaluating your extensions will help you eliminate outdated or broken extensions that might hinder the store’s performance.

You can also replace your current customizations with the Magento 2 in-built extensions. Leveraging the available extensions also eliminates the need to maintain custom code, thus reducing the overall development and support costs.

Evaluate Third-Party System Integrations

Third-party integrations are external systems linked to your eCommerce store using an application programming interface (API). They allow store owners to incorporate complex features quickly that otherwise take a few months to develop, reducing costs and efforts.

Ideally, you should review these third-party system integrations, including order and inventory management, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM). A thorough review will help determine if these integrations continue performing seamlessly or if the Magento version upgrade will enhance their performance.

Note: Magento 2 offers conversion scripts to automate data migration, such as customers and orders, from Magento 1.x platforms. Utilizing these tools can reduce the Magento 2 upgrade cost while boosting efficiency.

Plan Your Upgrade Process

The store success largely depends on how well you plan the Magento 2 upgrade process. Merchants are required to invest their time, effort, and resources in performing version upgrades, so ensure your team and major stakeholders are aware of the process.

Here are three areas you must take into account for a successful transition.

Determine Your Project Scope

Developing a project scope is critical for seamless, on-time project delivery. It is a detailed description of the project’s needs and the expected outcome. In addition, a project scope defines the project boundaries and lists scenarios outside the team’s control.

A substantial project scope offers your team a clear understanding of the project size, scale, and complexity, thus reducing uncertainty.

Notify All Involved Parties

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As mentioned, the Magento upgrade process is a significant development involving numerous changes. It usually spans throughout your entire organization, affecting your finances, marketing, customer services, and more. Hence, it’s fundamental to inform not only the team member but also other people who are most likely to be affected by the changes.

Clear communication is the need of the hour. Keeping involved parties aware of the upcoming changes will help them determine their impact and stay prepared.

Time Your Move

Always align the upgrade process with a non-compromising launch date. This means that you must avoid events or the holiday season to introduce any significant updates. Your team members might not be ready and preoccupied with other tasks, resulting in delay or unnecessary risks.

As a result, ensure that the project timing considers events and team schedules.

Bottom Line

Moving ahead with the latest Magento version upgrade is crucial to staying relevant and competitive in the digital landscape. Besides, it is the best way to customize your store with new functionalities that best suit your preferences. While upgrading the Magento version may seem a daunting task, strategic and thoughtful planning will help you reduce risk and cost while ensuring business scalability.

The post Magento 2 Upgrade Checklist  appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Magento is a powerful, open-source platform that stands out with its great functionalities and features. Over the years, this platform has made tremendous growth and established itself as the most reliable platform.

Besides, it offers great flexibility and customization options, allowing businesses of all sizes and types to build a thriving eCommerce business.

However, it’s vital to remember that while Magento offers numerous in-built features to optimize your store, some features are not available by default. This is where Magento extensions come into play.

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What are Magento 2 Extensions and Why Do I Need Them?

A Magento extension is an add-on software module designed using a block of PHP code with functions. This module allows Magento store owners to enhance its functionality and add beneficial features to their business.

Magento extensions are enriching tools that assist businesses in processing orders, managing sales, shipping, reporting, and more. The following part unwraps some of the benefits of Magento 2 extensions.

• Enhanced User Experience

User experience (UX) has an enormous impact on the success of your eCommerce store. A user-friendly store encourages users to interact with the store while assuring data security and privacy.

Magento extensions can enhance UX by offering a convenient, secured shopping experience. Besides, they keep your UX up-to-date by incorporating the latest features, thus boosting customer interactions.

• Improved Site Loading Speed

Approximately 40% of the visitors leave a website if it takes over three seconds to load. Hence, your website speed is another vital aspect impacting the conversion rates.

Extensions help optimize the entire website structure, thus boosting the loading speed. Moreover, reliable Magento extensions ensure a good loading speed on all major platforms.

• Wider Reach

Language barriers are among the biggest challenges for start-ups and SMEs looking to expand globally. Besides, people prefer interacting with websites offering information in their native language.

Magento extensions, such as language translation ones, facilitate customer interactions by converting content into the native language. This enables businesses to expand their reach to the desired target audience, thus boosting sales and revenues.

Top Ten Magento 2 Extensions

Selecting the right Magento extension for your eCommerce store is crucial. However, with numerous Magento extensions available in the market, merchants often face trouble identifying the right ones.

The following part lists the top ten free and paid Magento 2 extensions must-have for a successful eCommerce store.

1. Performance Optimization Tool

This extension by PotatoCommerce speeds up your Magento store by optimizing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files. Besides, the tool merges CSS and JavaScript content and defers JavaScript parsing, thereby improving Google PageSpeed score and SEO performance.

As mentioned above, a fast-loading website is crucial for business scalability, making Performance Optimization Tool a must-have for Magento eCommerce stores.

Features:

• JavaScript minifying and CSS optimization
• Lazy Load Images
• Merging JavaScript to reduce server requests

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2. Out of Stock Notification

Avoid losing sales from exhausted items using the Out of Stock extension. This tool helps merchants identify the most in-demand products, allowing them to plan a timely restock. It also informs customers and guest visitors about the stock status and price changes.

Features:

• Automated notifications on low stock/out of stock items
• Stock and price alerts to customers and guest visitors
• Seamless user subscription management

3. Shipping Tracker by MageAnts

Enhance customer shopping experience using the Magento 2 Shipping Tracker extension. This tool offers customers an order tracking option, allowing them to check their order status using order ID and email.

Features:

• Send order tracking link via SMS
• Track shipments directly on the shipping partner’s page
• Supports USPS, DHL, Federal Express, and more

4. Magento 2 One Step Checkout by MagePlaza

Improve conversion rates by reducing cart abandonment rate. The One Step Checkout extension simplifies the purchase process and creates a streamlined checkout experience, ensuring customer delight.

Features:

• Optimized checkout page
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Checkout layout customization

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5. Mageplaza Security Extension

On average, there is a hacking attack every 39 seconds. In addition, small businesses are more prone to data breaches and cyberattacks.

Mageplaza’s Security extension is an ideal security solution for Magento store owners. It implements a set number of failed login attempts, preventing break-in attempts and locking out hackers. In addition, the module offers a vital security checklist and login reports.

Features:

• Brute force attack prevention
• File change detection
• Away mode to restrict logins for a specific period

6. Layered Navigation by Aheadworks

Layered Navigation is among the best store usability extensions, improving all navigation aspects. This advanced extension allows customers to select multiple products attributes simultaneously without page reloads.

In addition, Layered Navigation provides customers with three new filter types: items in stock, products on sale, and new arrivals.

Features:

• Set up standalone brand pages
• Structured, SEO-friendly URLs
• Infinite product scrolling

7. Yotpo Reviews

Customer reviews are social proof of your product’s quality for potential buyers. Besides, they are vital for building customer trust and boosting brand reputation.

The Yotpo Reviews extension allows merchants to display user reviews, ratings, photos, and more, thus offering an authentic shopping experience. This tool seamlessly integrates with Magento stores, assisting businesses to validate their product’s value in front of new customers.

Features:

• On-site reviews and photos display
• Flag negative reviews that require attention
• Share reviews on social media

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8. Xtento Two-Factor Authentication

The Two-Factor Authentication extension offers an additional layer of security, ensuring data security and integrity. This tool adds supplementary information when logging into the Magento backend. This includes inserting a security code (one-time password) along with the username and password to gain access.

Features:

• Code valid for only 30 seconds
• Compatible with Android and iOS applications
• Option to disable authentication for trusted IP addresses

9. SEO Suite Ultimate by Mageworx

SEO Suite Ultimate is a powerful extension that merchants can employ to maximize your site’s SEO efficiency. This tool utilizes advanced product templates that automatically optimize infinite product meta titles, descriptions, URL structure, meta keywords, and image alt tags. By altering these vital components, SEO Suite Ultimate allows search engines to crawl and index the website quickly, thus boosting rankings and driving organic traffic.

Features:

• Rapid URL and metadata optimization
• SEO-friendly RSS Feed URLs
• Set redirects and eliminate duplicate content

10. Magic Zoom by Magic Toolbox

Most eCommerce websites fail to provide a natural “feel” of their product. Hence, most people research a product online but visit a brick-and-mortar store for purchasing.

The Magic Zoom extension eliminates this issue by offering an immersive fullscreen view, allowing customers to understand your products better.

Features:

• Responsive design for effortless browsing
• Option to add product video
• Display 360 product spins

Bottom Line

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Extensions have far-reaching impacts on your eCommerce store and the end-user experience. Hence, it’s vital to add the suitable Magento 2 extensions to assist merchants in increasing the store’s visibility, traffic, and security, thereby boosting sales and revenues.

The post Top 10 Magento 2 Extensions To Supercharge Your eCommerce Store appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Slow food service from a popular restaurant can result in poor reviews, leading to less customer turnaround in the future. Similarly, a slow site speed can drive visitors away, reducing overall site traffic and search engine rankings.

Most eCommerce store owners, including those on Shopify and Magento, spend a lot of time and resources identifying ways to fix a slow-loading site without much success.

Fortunately, Google PageSpeed Insights helps you identify and fix issues pertaining to slow load times, increasing page speed.

The following guide provides in-depth information on Google PageSpeed Insights, and how eCommerce store owners like Magento can achieve a 90+ PageSpeed score.

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What is Google PageSpeed Insights?

PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free Google tool that assists website owners in measuring and improving the site’s loading time across mobile and desktop devices. It leverages an open-source technology called Lighthouse that performs numerous audits to collect, analyze, and evaluate data on a single URL. Based on this, PageSpeed Insights provides an overall page’s performance score.

Google PageSpeed Insights determine this performance score by combining lab data with real-world data from the Chrome User Experience Report dataset. The lab data, also called performance data, is collected in a controlled environment, i.e., simulation performed with a predefined device and network settings.

How Is Google PageSpeed Insights Score Calculated?

Website owners often think that PSI measures the total loading time for a web page; however, this is far from the truth. PSI tool instead focuses on “Progressive Web Metrics” to capture the user experience and determine the performance score.

Here are six scientific metrics that PSI uses to calculate your overall performance score (0-100).

• First Contentful Paint (FCP): time taken by the browser to display the first text or image of a page.
• First Meaningful Paint (FMP): time taken by the browser to display the page’s primary content.
• First CPU Idle: time taken by a page to become minimally interactive.
• Time to Interactive (TTI): time taken by a page to become fully interactive for the user.
• Speed Index (SI): how quickly the entire content on the page is visually displayed.

While these five metrics determine your PageSpeed score, they don’t contribute equally. The importance of each metric in descending order is as follows:

TTI > SI > FCP > First CPU Idle > FMP

Hence, site owners must prioritize more heavily weighted metrics for improving the performance score.

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What’s a Good Google PSI Score?

Once Google completes evaluating different metrics, it displays the PageSpeed score on a scale from 0 to 100. Based on the values of the weighted metrics, the aggregate performance is divided into the following three categories.

• Good: The PageSpeed score is 90 or above (in Green)
• Needs Improvement: Score is anywhere between 50 and 90 (in Orange)
• Poor: PageSpeed score is below 50 (in Red)

Most Magento store owners are obsessed over achieving 100/100 PageSpeed Insights score. By doing this, they often tend to overlook the most crucial aspect the PSI tool serves, i.e., recommendations.

The fundamental aim of Google PSI is to find performance issues on your eCommerce site, thus helping you optimize them for a fast actual and perceived loading speed.

Remember that your site visitors don’t care about your Google PSI score. They just want to view the site content as quickly as possible; however, a good Google PageSpeed will help you achieve this.

Here’s how Magento or other store owners can score higher on Google PSI, thus improving their site’s performance.

How to Increase Google PageSpeed Insights Score?

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Limit Plugins Usage

While most eCommerce store owners utilize plugins for added functionalities, too many plugins and other elements can increase your page load time. With hundreds of plugins available, businesses need to take time and assess what plugins are essential for their eCommerce site.

Avoid adding plugins unless absolutely necessary. Audit your site to identify irrelevant plugins and delete them. Besides, some plugins automatically minify code and resize images, thus improving page speed; however, determine whether adding such plugins is worth trading off with your page speed.

Eliminate Render Blocking Resources

Render blocking resources include JavaScript and CSS scripts that prevent your webpage from loading quickly. Whenever a user visits your eCommerce store, his browser downloads and processes these files before displaying the entire page, slowing the page loading time.

By eliminating such resources, you can reduce the number of requests a browser requires to fetch and render a webpage. Besides, inlining JavaScript and CSS code is highly effective in achieving a 90+ PageSpeed score. This technique incorporates JavaScript and CSS files directly into the initial HTTP response, allowing the browser to parse it instantly without making extra requests.

However, as this technique requires code changes, you’ll need thorough planning to execute this seamlessly.

Leverage Browser Caching

Caching allows browsers to save copies of your webpages, including logos, CSS files, and images, for a specified time. This lets the browser display the saved content quickly on future visits without making numerous requests to the website origin server, ensuring a faster page load time.

An efficient cache policy can help Magento store owners score 90+ on the Google PSI.

Image Compression and Optimization

Image compression is the easiest way for Magento store owners to attain a high PageSpeed Insights score. Media files and graphics contain considerable unused data that can drag the site’s performance and load time.

Resizing or compressing images can help reduce loading times, boosting your page’s performance. Ideally, you shouldn’t upload images larger than 1MB.

Besides, you can implement the “Lazy Loading” technique to defer offscreen images. This method allows the browser to only load immediately visible images instead of loading every image on the page, thus ensuring better performance.

Use a Content Delivery Network

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers from all over the world. It hosts your website locally to serve content from the closest server, thus reducing latency and improving user experience.

Moreover, CDN distributes your content on multiple servers, reducing the number of requests to the original server. As a result, CDN minimizes the risk of site overloading during heavy traffic, ensuring site stability and faster loading time.

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Bottom Line

Google PageSpeed Insights is a reliable tool that has gained tremendous importance over the years. It allows eCommerce store owners to analyze their site’s performance based on speed, mobile-friendliness, and code quality. In addition, these metrics deliver an accurate overview of common issues resulting in slow load time. This information is vital for businesses to deliver an exceptional user experience.

The post Complete Guide For Magento Optimization To Increase Google PageSpeed Insights appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

In November 2015, Magento 2.0 was finally released to the world. A lot of speculations were doing the rounds that 3 years after this release, Magento would cease to support all the previous versions of Magento 1.x.

This means that by the end of 2018, the websites running on version 1.x would stop receiving the security updates (essential for their site safety), and the on-going support from Magento completely.

Why Should You Upgrade to Magento 2?

Running a store on an unsafe and outdated platform will lead to site slowdown and performance issues, irreparable bugs, loss of PCI compliances as well as security breaches – that can negatively impact your business.

You would also be losing on the competitive advantage to the upgraded sites, since no new feature would be introduced in the obsolete version of Magento.

And even though a few independent developers might be willing to support version 1.x for a couple of years to keep you going; their focus too, would eventually shift to the latest versions.

The technology with the newer version will significantly impact the administrative back end and the customer-facing front end of your store. The fact necessitates either upgrading the ecommerce platform to Magento 2.0, or simply changing the platform entirely.

Is It a Smooth Migration ?

No, the migration to Magento 2.0 is not automated like most other upgrades. In fact, it is slightly complicated and a time consuming process – since a lot depends upon a store’s intricacies and the extensions used.

The data migration tools have to be ‘customized’ before they can be used to transfer data such as store settings, product catalog, categories, order and sales data, customer data, promo rules, wishlists etc. from M1 database to M2 database.

Media files can also be copied and pasted at appropriate places on M2 database.

However, the theme and code customizations of the store are non-transferable, since they may involve numerous third party extensions. This means you would have to invest extra time in installing and resetting it all over again on Magento 2.0.

The transition to M2 may sound intimidating today and while some would still prefer sticking to the older versions; it will be unavoidable in the coming years. With the new businesses adapting Magento 2 to optimize their operations in order to drive growth, you would be left with no choice but to upgrade.

 Magento 2 Features

Make sure you do NOT use RAW and TIF file types for your images. Both are unusable for the web because of their large size and must be converted to JPEG, GIF or PNG before being uploaded.

• The new backend Admin panel has an intuitive drag-drop layout that will help in reducing the time to manage an online store. The user interface is optimized and friendly even for non-technical users.
• The responsive web design (more focus on mobile responsiveness) and faster performance due to full page caching will account for more sales and better SEO.
• Magento 2 easily integrates plenty of additional extensions, including the popular payment gateways and will also cater to video and theme integrations.
• Unlike the previous versions, the checkout process is more streamlined to increase the conversions and retain customers.
• It has easy installations, maintenance and updates, adding to its flexibilities.

Conclusion

Magento 2 is set to offer innovative opportunities to all businesses and developers across the world, to deliver an engaging omnichannel shopping experiences to their users.

The transition is a good opportunity for you to implement newer ideas. Discard what you don’t need and revamp your store for a more smoother and better functionality and enhanced customer experience.

Of course the sooner you move, the smoother the transition will be. You would have more time to catch up with the new technology, implement trial and error, and stay ahead of your competitors.

Not sure how to start ? Contact us for a free analysis of your Magento 2 upgrade.

Contact us for a FREE analysis

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Actively exploited Shoplift bug in Magento could compromise personal and credit card data on a very large scale.

The ebay owned web ecommerce platform Magento has recently discovered a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability or “shoplift bug” in its core code that can lead to complete compromise of any Magento-based store.

More than 200,000 online stores using Magento are at high risk because attackers can gain complete control with administrator access.

What steps did Checkpoint take after vulnerability discovery?

Security vendor Check Point uncovered the flaw and disclosed it privately first to ebay with a couple of suggested fixes before the public announcement.

The security alert was sent to all users both through email and a dashboard notification but Magento does not currently include the patch in its official edition. Users will have to log in to get the patch and apply it.

What do I need to do to safeguard my store?

Checkpoint said that the vulnerability can affect any Magento based store and has urged to apply the security patch immediately to fix the flaw if not done so already. The patch was released on Feb 9,2015, SUPEE-5344, and is available to download here.

If you’d like to watch a demo of a way the RCE vulnerability can be exploited, Checkpoint has posted a video here.

What type of attack is it?

The vulnerability is actually composed of multiple vulnerabilities that eventually allow an unauthenticated hacker to execute PHP code on the web server.

The attacker bypasses all security mechanisms and gains full control of the system and its database, risking credit card information or financial and personal data.

There are a large number of Magento stores using both Community and Enterprise Editions that are still vulnerable.

Unpatched ecommerce sites remain under compromise threat

Check Point researcher Netanel Rubin, responsible for discovering the vulnerability, said that they are not aware of any current exploit.

But the bad news is that hackers have picked up on the advisory and are targeting unpatched applications, according to Analysts with Sucuri Security.

About 30% of ecommerce sites use Magneto platform for their online store and close to half of them remain unpatched. This not only represents a serious threat but also represents the need for understanding that security is a process requirement in every business.

Mageshield provides you the security patched solution for your Magento store as well. Please act now to make sure that your Magento store is secure!

The post Major vulnerability discovered in Magento ecommerce. Apply Security Patch Immediately appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

It’s so easy that you can get started anytime. All you need to do is install the extension, configure it from admin panel, download the app builds and release them on Google play and App store.

Reason #1: Cost Effective

Mofluid system is highly customizable and allows you to use all the great features of an easy-to-use Magento plus the power of a native mobile app. Thus, it will cost you just a fraction of what a made-from-scratch app would be.

Most developers charge $20,000 – $100,000 per platform. (See this calculator to prove our point.) It’s not easy or cheap to make an app (or a website, for that matter) from scratch. They can easily and quickly make an app for the fraction of the cost.

Reason #2: It reduces time to market

Others need months or even years to launch a similar mobile app strategy. With Mofluid ,you’ll need just a few hours to do so! The only thing you’ll regret is the time and money you lost before using Mofluid.

Reason #3: Customize the look and feel of your mobile shops with a few clicks

Mofluid unique widget system allows you to set up a customized mobile app with just a few clicks. No programming skills are needed, with their intuitive admin interface. You can choose your brand’s color, upload logo, banner sliders so your magento shopping apps will look like YOURS. You can even pick layout themes that you prefer (Modern theme, Elegant theme).

Reason #4: Off the shelf solution

When you buy a new suit, you want the style to be tailored and customized to you. This is the best way to ensure the suit fits.

While choosing mobile enterprise apps, it’s not much different. Mofluid is off the shelf solution, mobile apps that are designed and built specifically for your needs end up being a better fit – and investment – for your company.

Choosing the best solution is a big decision and since the final decision requires a financial and time commitment, the options must be fully considered to ensure the right decision is made. Here are four characteristics, which will aid in evaluating and understanding how Mofluid is the right choice to make :

• Compatibility with Android as well as IOS platform
• Seamlessly Integrates Magento commerce store with your shopping app.
• Excellent performance of mobile apps on various dimensions – speed, resource intensity, etc
• Scalable of handling demands that can vary and spike unexpectedly

Reason #5: Engages your customers

Mofluid not only creates an app but also engages your customers. Mofluid is integrated with pushwoosh. Pushwoosh is the push notification service that’s highly scalable and offers good value for money. It offers audience segmentation and the ability to schedule batches of push notifications. So, with Mofluid establish a deep connection with your audience by engaging users via meaningful messages and content.

Reason #6: Broadest Payment options

Mofluid keeps adding popular payment gateways. Your magento shopping apps already can work with almost ALL popular gateways.

To satisfy more merchants across countries, Mofluid keeps updating with new payment gateways regularly and has the largest payment gateway plugins available – right now. Click here to check
out the existing payment gateways.

Reason #7: Upgrade and maintainability

With every new release they delivers great new features that will make your app a delight to use every time. They keep upgrading to invent new releases which helps in enhancing the mobile app to the latest trend.
When it come to the support and maintenance, Mofluid provide instant gratification, and they expect concerns and errors to be addressed rapidly and sufficiently across multiple channels.They helps brands deliver exceptional customer support to their customers.

Reason #8: Workflow & User experience measured for top brands like YepMe, Mobileistic

Mofluid has already worked with the brands like YepMe, Mobileistic. Check out their mobile app to measure the performance of Mofluid.

The post 8 Reason Why You Should Use Mofluid – Review appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Attackers are increasingly and actively exploiting an unknown flaw in Magento, to steal credit card information.

More than 200,000 online stores using Magento, the ebay owned web exommerce platform, are at high risk because attackers can gain access to sensitive data submitted by a customer to Magento.

This is the second attack on Magento in a period of three months, we had reported about the Shoplift bug here. It had posed a critical threat to unpatched sites and lead to complete compromise of affected sites.

How the attack works?

Web security firm Sucuri are still investigating the attack vectors and said, “It seems though that the attacker is exploiting a vulnerability in Magento core or some widely used module/extension. Using this vector, the attacker is able to inject malicious code into the Magento core file.”

Sucuri researcher Peter Gramantik, says further is his post, that once this code is injected, attacker can take sensitive customer information and keep an eye on the website silently.

Every POST request goes to the attacker, who identifies valuable credit card details only, based on some structured rules before storing it in an encrypted form.

Attackers store the billing information, processed by the infected site, in a fake image (JPEG or GIF) file. The image file might look like a broken image, if simply loaded via web browser. However, the attacker can download the entire file and decrypt the stolen data using Public Key in an attempt to collect all the billing information processed by the Magento e-commerce website.

Can you trace the attack?

To evade discovery, the malicious script includes a small purge function that wipes trails clean.

What’s also noteworthy is that the PUBLIC_KEY used to decrypt the stolen data, is the same in different instances of attack. It means that it could probably be a single person responsible for creating all the different versions of the script.

Attackers also alter the creation timestamp of fake image and add a header to escape detection.

When does ecommerce site end user know that they are at risk?
Unfortunately, the end user does not know that his credit card details have been compromised until they raise their ugly heads on your bank statements.

More Variants of the attack

Another variant discovered and investigated by Sucuri, is more direct than the previous one. It simply steals the payment details during the transaction processing and without being detected sends a mail to the hacker’s email.

This variant does not encrypt any information before sending it to the attacker. Rather it uses existing data variables lying unprotected, pointing out that they have complete knowledge of how the function and Magento works.

How to safeguard your store against attack?

Later in their post Sucuri said that, it’s very important for the merchants to realize that its their responsibility to protect their customers’ sensitive data and urged them to do so through PCI compliance.

Since such attacks are on the rise and can attack any ecommerce, not just Magento users in particular, its more important than ever to closely monitor your site and do everything possible to safeguard it.

The post Hackers Exploit Zero-Day Vulnerability in Ebay Magento Compromising Credit Card information appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Magento has recently uncovered some potential flaw and urged its users to immediately apply the patch SUPEE-6285. This is the third critical security patch released recently after SUPEE-5344, SUPEE-5994 and applies to all editions of the Magento Community and Enterprise software.

It is recommended that you either apply all the three patches or upgrade to the latest version of the application immediately to help protect your website from exposure to multiple security vulnerabilities.

What are the security issues that the releases safeguards against?

Even though there are no confirmed attacks reported, related to the following issues, Magento has raised critical warning to take the first step against attack, before it happens.

The patch takes care of the following vulnerabilities –
Attacker can exploit the vulnerability to impersonate as administrator, gaining access to the last orders feed and posing a serious threat by compromising sensitive data on the website.
Multiple security issues like cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and error path disclosure vulnerabilities have been addressed.

How do I download and apply these patches?

All site owners and administrators need to install immediately –
Enterprise Edition – Download a patch available for Enterprise Edition 1.9 and later releases
Community Edition – Download a patch available for Community Edition 1.4.1 to 1.9.1.1. Or you can install the latest release, Community Edition 1.9.2, that is now available for download.

Please Note –

To ensure correct working of the patch, you need to first implement SUPEE-5994 (issued in May)
Apply the right patch for your instance, as there are separate patches for each version of Magento.
The patches are not server wide, so if your store uses multiple Magento instances, you will need to apply a patch to each instance individually.

To read about more Magento Vulnerabilities, check our blog post:
Hackers Exploit Zero-Day Vulnerability in Ebay Magento Compromising Credit Card information
Major vulnerability discovered in Magento ecommerce. Apply Security Patch Immediately

The post Magento Releases Critical Security Patch to Secure Against Foreseen Security Vulnerabilities appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Many people asked us recently how to create wireframes or mockups for their mobile apps. That’s why we decided to write this post and to list 10 tools you might want to use to create your wireframes.

Here’s the list:

 1. Framer

Framer is a modern wireframing tool that allows you to build interactive and animated prototypes.

This tool allows you to:

• Code in their own open source prototyping framework
• Preview your work and get instant visual feedback
• Set up and use complex interactions
• Animate any object into 3D space with spring physics. Hardware accelerate for 60 FPS.

Framer is a great tool for designers looking to flesh out the interaction of an interface. The tool integrates well with Photoshop which makes it easy to export assets and begin prototyping them as objects in Javascript.

The main reason to use Frame is to create and communicate interactions. This shortens the development period and allows developers to easily understand the concept.

2. Indigo Studio

Indigo Studio allows you to create functional, animated UI prototypes all without writing a single line of code.

With this tool you can design storyboards in real-world context; quickly build application design interactions; and integrate them with your storyboards and annotate those designs.

You can then easily share your ready designs with your team members and go from idea to development faster than ever.

If you’re looking for something not as complex and easy to use at the same time, Indigo Studio would be your choice. The pricing is quite convenient considering the limited set of functionality.

3. Mockingbird

Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of websites and applications.

The tool allows you to:

• Drag and drop UI elements on the page then rearrange and resize them to the create the best mockup
• Link multiple mockups together and preview them in order to review the flow of your application
• Share a link with others and let them edit and collaborate on the project

Mockingbird is fully web-based, which makes it easy to access your mockups from anywhere and from all devices. Files can be exported into PDFs and PNGs.

4. Simulify

Simulify is both a web and desktop-based application to build interactive prototypes, mockups and wireframes; and share them instantly with your team.

The tool allows you to:

• Design interactive prototypes, mockups and wireframes
• Drag and drop widgets and make your prototype interactive
• Share your prototypes and wireframes instantly via chat or email

This tool is created for SMEs and freelancers who can easily develop their projects and benefit from it. It is also great for beginners who are just starting out with building wireframes.

5. Solidify

Solidify lets you create clickable prototypes from sketches, wireframes, or mockups. It is one of the quickest ways to prototype interface screens for user testing feedback across devices.

The tool is great if you want to go beyond wireframing and visualize your ideas. With Solidify, you can easily create a clickable prototype and share it with others for feedback.

You can upload screens and use hotspots to link them together. You might choose to receive general feedback on individual pages or your entire prototype.

With the tool you can ask testers to complete specific tasks and track which ones managed to complete it.

6. Lovely Charts

Lovely Charts is a diagramming application that allows you to create professional looking diagrams of all kinds, such as flowcharts, sitemaps, business processes, organisation charts, wireframes, etc.

It’s a modern alternative to many of the more traditional applications that can be used for charting and diagrams.

One of its best features is the collaboration feature. This makes it possible for people to work together on the same diagram. Everything can be accessed from within the same application, which can be accessed on any computer and virtually any browser, including FireFox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome.

The tool has desktop, iPad and online editions and is pretty much available from anywhere.

7. ForeUI

ForeUI is an easy-to-use UI prototyping tool, designed to create mockups, wireframes, and prototypes for any application or website you have in mind.

There is no need to code. You can just use the drag and drop feature to create your wireframe or prototype.

You can easily change the style of your prototype by simply switching the UI theme. You can even design the behavior of prototypes by defining intuitive flow charts to handle specific events.

Your prototype can then be exported to wireframe images, PDF documents or HTML5 simulation.

8. Creately

Creately helps you create and collaborate on professional diagrams, flow charts, wireframes, process flows, mind maps, etc.

It currently supports more than 40 types of diagrams and comes with more than 1000 templates. That way you can easily use ready elements to speed up your process.

The tool is built for real-life collaboration and others can be added by email to contribute to the project. That way people can work together on the same document at the same time, whether you’re using the desktop or the web-based version.

You can also use Creately Desktop to work offline and keep your files safe on your computer. Changes that you make in the desktop version will be later synced with your documents in the Cloud.

9. JumpChart

JumpChart is a tool that allows you to plan and execute on websites and apps. It helps you create mockups, approve changes, send attachments, copy files, add notes to projects and design architecture.

It’s a great tool when you’re working with a big team and want everyone to be aware of what they need to do on the project. It also helps them work more efficiently.

It’s great for copywriters because they can fill the text per page basis and designers can work with real and ready content. Project managers, on other hand, can easily check and approve every change along the way.

10. Lumzy

Lumzy is a free web-based wireframing tool that includes real time collaboration and clickable prototyping.

Some of the most popular features you can use are:

• Drag and drop – simply select and place UI elements on the page
• Real time collaboration – get your team involved in the projects. Allows several people to edit and make changes at the same time
• Live chat – team members can chat and coordinate inside the platform
• Image editor – you can edit any image inside the platform.

The platform is relatively easy to use and learn.

In conclusion:

Not all tools are the same but they pretty much cover the same basics. When you’re choosing yours, think about if you want a web or desktop based version (or both). Also think about whether you want to be able to drag and drop ready UI elements or you want to write your own code (like in Framer).

Do you currently use any wireframing tools to create mockups and prototypes? Which ones? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 10 Great Wireframing Tools for Mobile appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.

Another critical Zero-Day Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in WordPress was announced and patched on Monday, after fixing a similar flaw earlier this week.

The vulnerability, discovered by Finland based security firm Klikki Oy, gives full control to an attacker to the web server posing a critical threat to millions of sites that are powered by the popular content management system.

How does the attack work?

The exploit works by injecting Javascript code into the comments section of the WordPress site by a malicious attacker. The script executes when someone views the code.

The cross site scripts are considered as one of the most notorious and common web flaws allowing the hacker to run any arbitrary, bug infected code on the server.

If the script is triggered by a logged-in administrator under default setup, where comments need admin approval, the attacker can leverage the flaw to execute rogue code on the web server through the plugin and theme editors.

Now after the first comment approval, attacker is free to do anything like change admin password, create new admin or take over complete system.

How was the vulnerability discovered?

Jouko Pynnonen of Klikki Oy is credited for discovering the flaw. The detailed the proof-of-concept code can be found on their website.

The vulnerability bears resemblance to another flaw reported last year by researcher Cedric Van Bockhaven in his blog, here.

If you need a visual proof-of-concept attack in progress, watch this video by Klikki Oy –

https://youtu.be/OCqQZJZ1Ie4

How can I protect my website against the vulnerability?

Site owners and administrators are urged to immediately download WordPress 4.2.1 or press “Update Now” from Dashboard → Updates.

WordPress versions 3.9.3, 4.1.1, 4.1.2, and the latest version 4.2 are vulnerable to the XSS exploit.

If your WordPress site uses its commenting system, it is prone to the XSS attack. The vulnerability not only affects comment section but complete WordPress core and plug-ins, so be warned and upgrade the system. In the meantime, disable the comments, do not approve any comments and utilize a Firewall.

Mageshield also provides you the security patched solution for your WordPress site. Please act now to make sure that your WordPress site is secure!

The post Millions at risk with Critical WordPress Zero-day Vulnerability appeared first on MageShield | Secure & simple magento maintenance.