Problem 1: Configuring Magento With A New Domain

Let’s assume that your Magento is configured with www.yourdomain.com and you want to change the domain to www.anotherdomain.com. This may result from using a temporary domain as a way to redirect traffic or if you’re a wholesaler who operates multiple retail domains.

There are two ways to configure your Magento store with a new domain:

1. First, go to MySQL Manager (for many, it is PHPMyAdmin). Select your Database and find the table called core_config_data and click on it.
2. In the core_config_data table, you can seeweb/unsecure/base_url and web/secure/base_url entries.
3. Change your old domain name with your new domain and click the Go button to save the changes.

Another option is to clear your Magento cache. The cache folder is located in your Magento root directory /var/cache. To clear the cache, just delete the folder and go to your Magento admin System > Cache Management and clear all Cache.

Magento is a robust platform that runs on stored cache and tries to display as much as possible. It is within best practices to periodically clear your cache to see any sort of implemented changes within the platform, such as the addition of new extensions, data updates, or content changes. 

Problem 2: Magento 2 Reset Admin Password

If you don’t remember your admin password or want a quick way to update it, then we have the solution for you. Just go to your phpMyAdmin or MySQL Manager, select your Magento database and find the admin_user table. Replace your old password with your new password. Make sure you insert the password in MD5 function – and write it down somewhere secure if you’re in the habit of forgetting your passwords!

Problem 3: Enable Search Engine Friendly URLs in Magento

Search engine friendly URLs show links that are short, but full of keywords. These URLs can help your store site rank higher in search engines, which drives more traffic and builds higher trust. Besides that, visitors find it easier to remember and navigate with a short and concise URL. Hence, enabling search engine friendly URLs is a crucial step to ensuring your e-commerce store is SEO optimized.

Enabling Search Engine friendly URLs in Magento is easy. You just have to login into your Magento admin and go to System > Configuration click on Web in the left panel, as demonstrated below:

Click on Search Engines Optimization and turn on the Use Web Server Rewrites (mark as Yes). Click on the Save Config button and your Magento SEF URLs will be enabled.

Your store’s URL is the first thing Google and visitors will see when they visit your website. URLs that are friendly, easy-to-read, and contain keywords describing the content of your website will help users remember your website address easily, and of course, it helps your website rank higher on the SERP.

Problem 4: Speed Up Magento

Website speed optimization can lead to a boost in on-site conversions and SEO because faster sites are more appealing to both users and search engines. Users expect a webpage to load quickly and, if it doesn’t, many will abandon the site.

To speed up your Magento store, it is recommended to enable Magento Compilation function. The performance increase is between 25% – 50% on page loads. You can enable Magento Compilation from your Magento admin just go to System > Tools > Compilation. And click on Run Compilation Process.

You should also remember that your Magento 2 hosting solution provider plays a substantial part in deciding the speed of your store. You should choose a provider which is optimized to run a Magento store with seamless performance. Consider a solution provider like Cloudways, which is not only built to withstand the toughest of hosting problems but can also be relied upon in times of sudden traffic increases as it gives you the option to scale your Magento server whenever you feel the need.

Problem 5: Redirect Magento to Open Through www

For SEO and usability purposes you need to redirect your visitor to open your Magento store only through www (http://www.yourdomain.com).

A rewrite can ‌manage miscellaneous redirects, such as redirecting a page from your store to an external website. For example, you might have two e-commerce websites, each with their own domain. You can use a custom redirect to reroute requests for a product, category, or page to the other website.

This is easy to do in Magento. Open your .htaccess file located in your Magento root. In this file search theRewriteEngine and right after this add following code:

After this save your .htaccess file and log in to your Magento admin and go to System > Configuration > Web:

Click on the Unsecure tab and change the Base URL option from http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com. After this click on Save Config button and your Magento store will start working through www.yourdomain.com.

Problem 6: Solve Access Denied issue

To solve the error of access denied or Magento Admin not opening, you should log out from your admin panel and log in again, and reset the Magento admin privileges.

After logging in, just go to System > Permissions > Roles > Administrators.

Click on the Role Resources options shown on the left to make sure that Resource Access is set to All. Click on the Save Role button and your Magento permissions will be reset.

Conclusion

Optimal performance is key for any successful e-commerce store. Page speed has a direct and measurable impact on the conversion rate of your website, so having an optimized Magento installation is crucial to the success of your shop and brand. Magento is a resource-heavy e-commerce platform that requires the right set of resources and configurations for optimum performance. By solving some of these common Magento problems, you can help your e-commerce site run at its best and fully engage your customers.

Further Reading

• What You Need To Know About Performance Max Campaigns
• What Are Audio Ads?
• Google’s “Link Spam Update”: What You Should Know
• How To Optimize Your Shopify Page Speed

The post How To Resolve Common Magento Issues appeared first on NetElixir.

CMS platforms allow you to create and manage your website quickly and efficiently with minimum technical knowledge and resources. You can customize your website’s design and functionality according to the requirements of your e-commerce store. Each platform has its own SEO advantages to help your store rank in the search engine results page (SERPs) when people are searching for products related to your business.

For a full overview of Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce, download our e-Book on How to Choose the Right CMS Platform. Keep reading for a quick overview to help you narrow down your search.

What is the Best CMS Platform for E-Commerce?

Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce are among the top three user favorite platforms, though there are plenty to choose from. MIVA offers a flexible and adaptable e-commerce platform. Shopify currently hosts over 1 million websites and holds a market share of 2.8%, while Magento holds a market share of 1.8%.

Each platform offers different SEO and e-commerce advantages, detailed briefly below.

Choosing Shopify As Your CMS Platform

Smaller and first-time enterprises typically favor Shopify. Shopify offers a hosted solution with limited customization available for themes and templates. It is an user-friendly CMS platform with a drag-and-drop interface and simple inventory management feature. Additionally, Shopify has a basic set of SEO options to start getting your website attention on SERPs.

Shopify Advantages and Disadvantages

Shopify has a host of advantages to make developing your e-commerce website easier, especially for startups and beginners. There are a few disadvantages in terms of additional features, themes, and plugins costing a decent amount of money and there being limited customization options.

While offering basic SEO features, there are still a few common SEO issues found in Shopify, such as:

• Forced URL structure
• Duplicate content in collections and product pages
• Inability to edit Robots.txt files
• Setting up 301 redirects

NetElixir’s SEO team created SEO Hacks to help you solve some of these SEO issues. Watch how to fix duplicate content in Shopify now.

To update your Robots.txt files on Shopify, create a text file named robotsnew.txt and upload it to the nearest root directory. Redirect the example.com/robots.txt to example.com/robotsnew.txt with a 301 redirect. Add no index tags for blocking search engines from crawling old robots.txt files.

Prioritize your redirects and make use of redirects import when setting up a new store to lessen the issue of setting up 301 redirects.

Overall, Shopify suits a wide range of customers, from e-commerce startup to enterprise-grade clients and is one of the most beginner-friendly options.

Choosing Magento

Medium and large enterprises usually prefer Magento, as it is a self-hosted, open-source platform with numerous customization possibilities. Because of the various advanced features and customization options, Magento has a more complicated interface than Shopify and is better suited for experienced e-commerce developers. Magento allows you to customize and update store design and SEO strategy for maximum output.

Magento Advantages and Disadvantages

Magento boasts of a wide range of solutions, from a cloud-based environment geared for a startup to dedicated hosting for an enterprise-grade site. Magento has a highly active community to offer guidance and support to your site. Your website is easy to customize through Magento’s multiple features and numerous extensions, including multi-language, multi-currency, and multi-storefront options. However, the extensive customization may be too complex for beginners. Migration from M1 to M2 is complicated and users need strong technical knowledge to operate the platform.

In terms of SEO, users of Magento often face issues with:

• Query string URLs from faceted navigation.
• Duplicate meta tags from product variations.
• Indexing search pages.
• Slow load speed on small or shared servers.

To address parameter URLs that are indexed from faceted navigation, block these filtered pages in robots.txt and add a no-index tag. Use canonical tags to point toward the actual product page and turn on the setting to use only top-level product URLs to fix duplicate meta tags.

Overall, Magento is advisable for those who have an existing website and/or those who are building a multi-channel web e-commerce store with complex functionalities to integrate with enterprise-grade applications. 

Choosing BigCommerce

Small and mid-sized e-commerce businesses typically prefer BigCommerce. It is a beginner-friendly CMS platform with hosted solutions, but no customization available. With BigCommerce, you have dedicated customer support and basic SEO features.

BigCommerce Advantages and Disadvantages

BigCommerce has a no frills store creation process with low pricing and no long term commitment, so it does not require much technical knowledge. BigCommerce fully hosts your site and offers limited themes and extensions to cater to your e-commerce needs. You can easily manage SEO activities and social links. However, through BigCommerce you have a limited email subscription list and certain design elements are not highly flexible. There are only a few free templates available and premium templates can get expensive.

Some common SEO issues for BigCommerce are:

• Complex implementation of canonical tags.
• Lack of testing environment.
• Default blog setup is on a sub-domain.
• Transaction limits are set on annual online sales.

Similar to Shopify and Magento, to address tagging issues, block filtered pages in robots.txt and add a no-index tag. To fix your blog default settings, use a third party blog platform like WordPress to install a blog on sub-directory.

Overall, BigCommerce is suitable for small and mid-sized businesses.

Choose Your CMS Platform

Choosing the right platform for your business is an essential e-commerce decision. For a deeper dive into the pros and cons of Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, download our CMS Platform e-Book.

At NetElixir, we specialize in implementing high-quality web development solutions for your e-commerce store and website hosted on Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, MIVA, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and other platforms. With our vast experience of managing digital marketing solutions for more than 500 e-commerce clients, we understand the nuances of different e-commerce platforms. A strong e-commerce foundation is critical to supporting your other digital marketing efforts. Our e-commerce and web development experts can provide comparisons between solutions to help you make an informed decision. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to experts at NetElixir.

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