Magento Store Manager Blog

Set Magento 2 Noindex and Nofollow Tags

2018-04-03T11:16:00.000+03:00

What Is the Purpose of Noindex and Nofollow Tags?

When you're starting a new project on dev server or make some transactional pages, you may need to hide some of your pages or whole website from search engines not to be indexed beforehand. The best way to tell robots visiting your site not to index or follow your content is to use robots.txt file and nofollow and noindex meta tags in html head of the page(s). Magento website allows you to configure such kind of settings from the admin panel with no code used.

What Is robots.txt File And Why Do You Need It?

Let's say, some web robots want to visit your site https://store.emagicone.com and index or track its content. Before starting the indexation the robots will first enter your https://store.emagicone.com/robots.txt file and check it. This file is located in the root of your Magento site and contains the instructions for those robots on how to process or not to process your site.

Setting Noindex and Nofollow in Magento 2.1.x

Find admin panel on the left side of your Magento installation and enter 'Stores' section;

Under 'Settings' press 'Configurations' and go to 'General settings' - 'Design'.
On the right you will find 'Search Engines Robots' settings.

Uncheck 'Use system value' box to activate 'Default Robots' drop-down menu.

There are four 'Default Robots' options available:

INDEX, FOLLOW - allows web robots to index your site and track it for changes;
NOINDEX, FOLLOW - instructs robots not to index your site, but allows to track it for changes;
INDEX, NOFOLLOW - instructs robots to index your site, but not to check it for changes furtherly.
NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW - forbids the robots neither to index nor to track you site.

You can select the option basing on your purposes or use 'Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File' field, in case you need to block access to some specific folders or URLs.

Input the following directives for robots into this field depending on your needs:

To block all robots from certain folders:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder name

To block specific robots from certain folders:

User-agent: robot name
Disallow: /folder name

To block some bots to access one folder, but allow to access another one:

User-agent: robot name
Disallow: /folder name Allow: /folder name

Method 2

There is another way to block robots from processing your web pages from admin panel:

From admin panel on the left select 'Content' section. Under 'Elements' select 'Pages'. You will find a table containing all pages of your store.

Select 'Edit' option from the 'Select' drop-down menu on the right.

Expand 'Design' section and find 'Layout Update XML' field. In order to prevent this page from indexing and following, insert the following code into this field:

Method 3: Setting Noindex/Nofollow For Specific Magento 2 Categories And Products

The above indicated code can also be used to configure permissions to some of your category or product pages whether in 2.1.x or in 2.2. These settings can be reached this way:

Blocking product page:

Select 'Products' from 'Catalog' section on the admin panel. Press 'Edit' on the right side of the product field. Scroll down and find 'Design' section. Expand it and enter this piece of code into 'Layout Update XML' field:

Blocking category page:

Select 'Categories' from 'Catalog' section and select necessary category from the list on the right. Find 'Design' section and enter the above indicated code into 'Layout Update XML' field.

How to Set Up Noindex/ Nofollow in 2.2.0, 2.2.1 and 2.2.2?

Find 'Content' section on Magento admin panel and select 'Configuration' under 'Design' subsection. You will find there a table containing all your storeviews.

Select the storeview you need to modify Noindex/Nofollow Settings for and Press 'Edit' in the 'Action' column.

Scroll down and expand 'Search Engine Robots' settings. Select necessary 'Default Robots' option or use 'Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File' field to change access settings for some specific folders.
Uncheck 'Use system value' box to enable 'Default Robots' drop-down menu.

Select necessary option or use 'Edit custom instruction of robots.txt File' field to block access to specific folders or URLs.

Input the following instructions for robots into this field basing on your needs:

To block all robots from certain folders:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder name

To block specific robots from certain folders:

User-agent: robot name
Disallow: /folder name

To block some robots to access one folder, but allow to access another one:

User-agent: robot name
Disallow: /folder name Allow: /folder name

Conclusions: Do I Need to Block Access to Some of My Links?

Definitely, yes. It is essential for an online store owner to be able to manage access to some of his/her site’s folders or URLs by forbidding or allowing web robots to index or follow them. Beside limiting access for unknown crawlers, you can considerably improve your SEO by applying these restrictions.

The thing is that, when filling your site with content, you probably strive to optimize it for Google as much as possible in order to show up in the first positions of search results. Although, some of your site links might have some negative influence on your Google rate, so it would be appropriate to disallow search engine robots to index or track them.

Magento provides its users with a majority of ways to manage site access in few clicks directly from admin panel. Take advantage of any of them and keep your web store protected from any undesirable indexing or tracking.

Magento 2: Get Product IDs Exported to CSV

2018-01-11T23:24:00.001+02:00

Need to export from your Magento 2 products with IDs to CSV file? Generally, for inventory management inside Magento, like different catalog updates, SKU is used as unique product identifier. So necessity to get CSV with Magento entity IDs usually emerges in special situations, for instance, when you want to integrate with some third-party system or management solutions.

Magento 1 VS Magento 2 Export Product IDs

In Magento 1 there was included the possibility to do the task with Dataflow profiles export. Magento 2 Export/Import is deprived of the default functionality to get the list of product IDs.

Naturally, if you have enough tech background, you can retrieve all of products via API or create some custom script to accomplish the task. If you do not have idea how to cope with it, in this tutorial I will show you the way to do it without changing Magento core files or hiring a developer to assist you.

The easiest and the most common approach is CSV export. Yes, it was mentioned above that it is not possible using out-of-the-box export means, that it why it is necessary to expand default functionality with enhanced possibilities using extension.

Store Manager for Magento app is a perfect solution for that. Why? It works equally good with both Magento 1 and Magento 2, does not require to be installed on your shop as you can connect remotely and the best thing is that you can use all the features of the software free for 14 days without limitations.

Get File Containing Magento 2 Product IDs Using Store Manager!

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Select Collection of Products With IDs to Be Exported

The application includes wide management possibilities, so you can make use of advanced filters to receive a collection of all products IDs, get those of products from particular category, retrieve goods IDs associated with configurable, bundle or grouped products, etc.

Export IDs Along with Other Necessary Product Details

Store Manager for Magento allows to decide what columns you want to include in the output export file. So apart from the collection of product IDs, you can also export necessary product-related fields, like SKU, name, category, some specific attributes, prices, quantity etc.

To select data to be exported simply drag necessary column from the left and drop them to the right pane of the window at the following step:

Automate Magento 2 CSV Export to Make It Regular

In case export of product IDs and related details is not one-off occasion, it is a good idea to automate the procedure and make it running without your involvement each regular period of time. This is especially true in case you need CSV with products IDs for integration with external systems.

Store Manager for Magento has built-in AutoExport functionality that allows to set up scheduled task without special efforts. You just need to configure export settings once and indicate when exactly and how often your further exports should be performed.

Export Product IDs from Magento 2 Store to CSV FREE!

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Magento 2: Configurable Product Price Calculation. What’s Changed?

2016-10-11T18:42:00.000+03:00

The advent of Magento 2 is associated with notable changes, starting from software architecture to completely redesigned backend. Whenever you have just started to deploy Magento 2.x versions or explore its functionality from the day renewed versions appeared, you come across different, compared to Magento 1.x, logics.

One of these multiple shifts refers to Magento 2 configurable products price settings. Comparing to Magento 1.x, its successor boasts of new approach to configurable product price handling. In a next few lines of this tutorial, we’ll cover this difference and explain how to price configurables in Magento 2.

Configurable Product Price Calculation in Magento 1.x

When you create configurable product in Magento 1.x, it does not matter what price you specify for associated simple products, since their prices are completely ignored. Instead, you need to set price mark-ups for configurable attribute values (super attribute) if some selection should cost more and some should be cheaper.

Super attribute is defined as Magento product attribute, on the basis of which configurable product selections are created. In other words, this attribute stands for characteristic, the product vary by (color, size, material).

Whatever price value you add for simple associated products, configurable product price will override associated product price. If super attribute values have mark-ups, it will be added to configurable product price.

Detailed tutorial on Magento super attributes is available by this link - What Are Magento Super Attributes? How to Add Super Attributes?

How to Set Price for Configurables in Magento 2.x

The notion of Magento super attribute price became a thing of the past. Magento 2 does not calculate price mark-ups on the basis of super attributes (Magento configurable attributes). Now configurable product price is absolutely ignored, only associated items cost is taken into account.

In Magento 2 each of associated product has its price and this price displays at the frontend when customer selects options from dropdown. Simple product prices override main configurable product price.

When creating associated simple products via admin generator, you can set different prices for them by one of the attribute. When you select this attribute, there will appear price boxes for each of attribute value you selected on previous step. As you can see at the screenshot below, we have chosen color to differentiate prices and input cost for each of values.

After generation completes, you can view prices of associated products.

By default the lowest price if shown at the storefront. For example, the lowest price in our case have blue belts ($11). When visitors open product page, they see $11 as product price. Although Magento 2 configurable product price will change, depending on combination of attribute values, customer selects.

Magento offers you also to set identical price for all selections. If you assign already existing simple products, they most likely have the prices specified.

If you need to massively set absolutely different prices for Magento products variations, consider Store Manager for Magento. It allows to edit associated simple product price within generator or via import.

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Magento 2. Where Has Group Price Disappeared?

2016-07-21T13:45:00.000+03:00

The advent of Magento 2 is associated with amazing key shopping cart updates and exciting features that make it more scalable and user-friendly. There is also a significant number of changes that are worth highlighting, among which we can distinguish Magento product pricing.

Since the time Magento 2 appeared, many store owners come curious to know where group price option disappeared. Indeed, we have completely re-designed product edit form with refurbished tabs and Advanced Pricing settings.

Magento Group Price in 1.x

Traditional Prices tab has been substituted by Advanced Pricing page, which, in comparison with Magento 1.x, does not have Group Price field.

Magento Group Price in 2.x

If Group Price function is no longer there, it is impossible to determine prices based on customer group, you might have come to this conclusion. This is actually not true.

Advanced Pricing configurations in Magento 2 define the conditions for special pricing depending on customer group and website. Magento 2 group price intersects with tier prices and can be set via it.

Adding Magento 2 Group Price

Tier price allows you to set quantity discounts to a member of specific customer group within chosen website or to all customers notwithstanding the group. When customers that belong to this group, visits product page, they are notified about possible discount.

The implementation of tier prices has been amplified and now you can create tier price with quantity 1, what automatically converts it to Magento 2 group price. Let’s configure the one to check how it works.

Navigate to Products->Catalog in Magento 2 admin sidebar, access the product grouped price should be ascribed to and open it in edit mode.

Expand Advanced Settings submenu on the left and switch to Advanced Pricing tab.

Click on Add Price button under tier price and specify the following:

Website - if you have several websites, select the one Magento 2 group price will apply to;
Customer group - expand the dropdown to see all the customer groups you have;

Quantity - specify 1 value in this field;
Item price - set Magento 2 group price that will display for shoppers from this customer group at product page

Press Save button in the upper right corner of the page to save the price settings.

Whenever you need to price the product differently for different customer groups you need correspondingly to designate several group prices, individual for each customer group.

Group price is the way we can change the price for individual product depending on customer group looking at this product. You can configure it manually for products you need or add in bulk with Store Manager for Magento application.

Download Free Store Manager and Bulk Add Magento 2 Group Price

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What to Check If Magento Catalog Price Rules Do Not Apply

2016-02-25T18:22:00.001+02:00

Magento catalog price rules feature provides you with an advantageous opportunity to selectively put merchandise on sale basing on some conditions. This is really very flexible way of discount set up, since you can configure numerous conditions, associate cost reductions with certain product category, customer group, attribute, etc. Everything seems to be clear and simple, although it does not always run without a hitch.

Oftentimes store owners claim that created price rule has no effect on product price. Having configured conditions in back-office they find out that Magento catalog price rules do not apply and price is not calculated. If you also have found yourself in such situations and would like to bypass these inconveniences in future, look through things to be checked if price rule does not apply.

Catalog Price Rule Status

There is Status field among Magento catalog price rules details that respectively offers you two selections in dropdown - Active and Inactive. If price rule does not influence price, check whether it has been activated first.

Have You Applied the Rule?

Suppose you have configured the rule and activated it. Verifying shows that this rule does not change price for desired group of products. One more reason of rule inefficiency is that you have not applied it. If you have just created Magento catalog price rules or implemented some modifications, apply them pressing correspondingly Apply Rules button on the toolbar.

Look Through Date Limit

Price rule configuring expects you to determine time period it will be valid within. Leaving it blank means you do not want to set date limitation and rule will work until you deactivate it. Whenever you want to set timeframes, you should select start and end date for this or that catalog price rule in Magento.

Respectively if the day, indicated as start date, have not come yet, price would not be affected by this catalog rule. If current date exceeds the one, provided as final for the rule, prices will not undergo changes.

Customer Group Assigned

Magento catalog price rules can be associated to certain customer groups. It means shoppers, that belong to other groups will not see discounts. It appears that one more reason of price rule inefficiency is incorrect customer group assigning.

Magento Catalog Price Rules Do Not Apply to Configurable Products?

Another malfunction you can stumble upon is that Magento catalog price rules do not apply to associated products, to be more precise it is calculated strangely. The matter is, to get subproduct price change due to Magento price rules properly, you should set Enable Discount to Subproductsfield in Actions tab of price rule settings to YES, choose discount type and value.

If discounts for subproducts is not enabled, configurable product mark-up stays the same, though main product price is reduced according to rule. For example high-heel price is $150, but is cut to $75, since we have determined -50% discount through price rule. Selections mark-up remains $10 and total price calculated is $85.

Products Don’t Fall Under Price Rule Conditions

Not infrequently discount is not calculated despite all the settings are specified accurately. The reason is surprisingly straightforward, target items do not match the conditions, you have specified. Check attentively whether you marked conditions as TRUE or FALSE for price rule to be applied. In case you have configured several conditions, selected If ALL of these conditions are TRUE option, and Magento price rule do not apply, most likely desired merchandise do not coincide with conditions combination.

Magento Attribute Disappeared in Dropdown in Conditions

Sometimes you may run into the issue when price rule condition dropdown does not longer display certain attribute, though this attribute had been available in the past.

Attribute is available in condition dropdown if it is marked as applicable. It is configured in attribute settings. Enable attribute editing, navigate to Properties->Frontend Properties and choose YES from dropdown.

Important:

Magento requires a complete reindex of the catalog for the rule to become active. After you create or update the rule, clear your cache and proceed with data re-index (System->Cache Management/Index Management)

Magento price rule may be deactivated by number of reasons, as you can see. Check points enumerated above if Magento catalog price rules do not apply and make price calculated accurately.

Consider Magento special price as the way to set discounted prices. Determine special price for multiple Magento products at once with Store Manager for Magento.

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How to Install Magento on Localhost Like XAMPP

2015-05-08T14:11:00.000+03:00

This step-by-step tutorial will help you install Magento quickly and easily on localhost.

When you install XAMPP - make sure to install "phpmyadmin". Once you have XAMPP installed and running, follow these steps:

Download

Download Magento CE from here (recommended .zip file for Windows)

https://www.magentocommerce.com/products/downloads/magento/

Extract contents of magento-1.9.1.0.zip into this folder:

c:\xampp\htdocs\

As a result you should have a new folder called "magento":

c:\xampp\htdocs\magento\

Now open this URL in your browser:

http://localhost/magento/

You should see Magento installation page:

Agree with terms and click "Continue"

On "Localization" page select preferred options and click "Continue"
On "Database Connection" page you must specify credentials to an existing database. You have to create it manually. This can be done from phpmyadmin (which should be installed along with XAMPP)

Keep the tab in your browser with Magento installation open. Open a new tab and enter this URL:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

You should see phpmyadmin dashboard. In the top menu click "Databases", then type some database name (say magentodb) and click "Create"

Return to Magento installation tab. Enter the newly created database name, username "root" into database user field and I'd recommend you to enable "Use Web Server (Apache) Rewrites" checkbox. You may leave all other fields as they are and click "Continue".

On the last step you have to enter your name, email and specify what username and password you would like to be used to log into your store backend (administration panel)

Access

That's it! Now you should be able to see your Magento store front by this URL

http://localhost/magento/

and log into backend using this URL

http://localhost/magento/admin/

Hope you find this tutorial helpful. If you have got any questions, you can ask in comments or in this topic of official Magento forum -

http://community.magento.com/t5/Programming-Questions/How-do-I-install-Magento-on-Local-host-lile-XAMP/m-p/3179#M790/