Our Blog
The latest goings on and design projects from the minds of Peacock Carter, the Newcastle upon Tyne website design agency.
From a sample of our design work as it is released to our thoughts on the web design industry, our blog could be said to be a source of entertainment, bafflement and awe-inspiring design.
Mage Titans - Manchester's first Magento conference
At the weekend, we packed our bags and headed south to the magnificent city of Manchester to attend the very first Mage Titans, a conference organised by Magento developers for Magento developers.
With world-famous Magento speakers, we jumped at the chance to share some time with other fantastic Magento developers, and take some much-needed time away from our screens.
World-famous Magento speakers
The conference had a great line up of speakers from all across the Magento offering us an insight into how other developers and Magento agencies work with the platform we love so much. Covering subjects from "the beautiful Magento module" brought to us by the charismatic Vinal Kopp, to "Magento on HHVM", presented by the master of ecommerce Daniel Sloof.
A highlight for me was the talk from Ben Marks himself (Magento developers' rockstar celebrity, if you will) giving us an update on what Magento has to offer us in the future, including new Magento community forums, and the inside scope of Magento 2! With plenty of coffee breaks thrown in allowing us to connect with the Magento community, we came out full of ideas and inpsiration for future Magento projects!
The venue: no laughing matter!
Mage Titans 2014 was held in Manchester's Comedy Store, a fantastic space usually showcasing the comedic talent of the world being taken over by Magento fanatics for the day. Some of the speakers even managed a few Magento-related jokes, which we'll spare you from!
We love to get out and about, and this was a real opportunity to take in a few sights for the weekend and explore the metropolitan wonder that is 21st century Manchester. Finding time to take in the picturesque canals, bars, restaurants and museums before returning to Newcastle: our personal favourite was the expansive Manchester Art Gallery.
We thoroughly enjoyed attending Mage Titans conference: fantastic speakers, great venues and a brilliant community that we're honoured to be a part of. We'd like thanks the organisers - including Jon and the lovely people at Manchester Digital for all the hard work and we have our fingers and toes crossed that we will be attending Mage Titans 2015, with a lot of potential for talks on Magento 2, we hope!
The New And Improved Parts Of Magento 1.9
With the new release of Magento 1.9, we thought it would be a good idea to explore the difference between itself and its predecessor.
Front-end Development
Responsive Web Design
Magento has previously been an architecture that has not provided much in the way of support for developers trying to develop a responsive theme within the platform. It is for this reason that, with an eager breath, all developers will be delighted to know that 1.9 comes with integrated "Responsive Web Design principles"
The most significant effect of this will undoubtedly be the time saved within projects. Magento estimates that a responsive theme can now be created in "about half the time". After viewing the code a few immediate changes can be noticed. Magento 1.9 now uses the CSS pre-compiler SASS allowing for re-usable code (This being through the use of CSS variables and much more. You can read more here). Additionally, a new set of non-conflicting jQuery operations have been entered into its libraries. Not only have they included jQuery but have also included new Javascript libraries.
Javascript Libraries
The new Javascript libraries have been integrated to reduce responsive conflict errors within 1.9. For example, "enquire.js" is used conditionally when the viewport size is below a certain size. Other features include ensuring that images have been fully loaded onto the page before allowing product zoom, a rotating banner library for 1.9's homepage, the newest jQuery library at the time of release, a support library for IE 6 through 8 and finally a library to facilitate the zoom on product pages.
Magento have listed a few area's that the out of the box theme has not integrated into these changes. They include area's such as the site map and captchas. However, there are no large segments of responsiveness missing in, what seems, an impressive addition to cross device compatibility within Magento.
Admin Changes
Shopping Cart / Checkout Changes
The shopping carts has also benefited from the introduction of new libraries within 1.9. The cart now uses an AJAX script of which refreshes the page upon a change of quantity of product instead of requiring a full refresh. However, this post would be a lot longer if every small improvement was mentioned so it may be better to stick with the significant ones.
Firstly, the order review page at checkout can now be disabled or even configured to best suit your needs. This - with it only being used within PayPal's express checkout - may not be applicable to all Magento stores, but for those that it is, it will allow for a much smoother user story and experience when purchasing a product on your store. To disable the page you can go through from System -> Configuration -> SALES -> Payment methods and find the option in the "Advanced options" tab. Here you can alter security validations (Such as HTTPS verification), the ability to allow guests to use paypal and whether or not to set billing agreements with the customer.
Another useful addition is the PayPal "Bill Me Later" option. This has been quoted as an option that "helps improve conversion rates" (Magento website). This allows for customers to be given a period of time (Often 6 months) to pay for their product purchased on your store. Although this may seem like an option that will hold up funds, it is a viable option if a store needs that little extra push in gaining the successful conversion rate that it requires.
Finally, 1.9 gives you the ability to add widgets into the mini shopping cart within your store. This, although not a dramatic change, is a statement of intent by Mageno to continue being the largest, most customisable E-Commerce CMS in the market. Promotions/advertisements and much more can be placed into the mini cart in order for our website to become as fine tuned as possible, giving you that little more in terms of individualism in the metropolis of the web.
Side Note: It is worth mentioning that the Enterprise Edition has integrated a patch that allows for the integration of the Solr search engine with the benefit of not having any need to update or patch yourself. There is no programming required when integrating this addition to Magento and can allow for a much higher level of personalised search results.
To Conclude
Magento's 1.9 update has been one of the most significant in a long time. This is because, it has not only updated the functionality of the CMS but also integrated a highly modern and responsive theme that is easily modified. This, after all, is the main thing that your customers will notice, and has been something that Magento had needed for a long time. With the combination of more modern, stylish stores for customers to view, and a rise in the ability to customise the store from the back end, this can be considered a successful update of which we can only be grateful for happening. Now, where is Magento 2?
Learning Magento Theme Development book released
We're pleased to announce that our fourth book on the Magento platform, Learning Magento Theme Development, has been released.
Written by our director, Richard Carter, this is his fourth book on the Magento platform, including a book on responsive Magento theming released in December 2013, and is a step-by-step guide for other web designers and developers to building custom Magento store designs themselves.
Learning Magento Theme Development builds on our years of experience helping clients on the Magento Community and Magento Enterprise platforms realise their potential online, building recurring customers, increasing conversion rates and improving the search engine friendliness of our clients' online stores.
You can find more information on this publication on the publisher's website.
Our Lane 7 Newcastle Minigolf Adventure
Once again we had been kindly invited by the lovely people at Lane 7 to test out the new mini golf course in the old ball room in the basement of the building (after a barrage of tweets about Richard's shoes)! We were honoured to be the first group to test drive the new mini golf (especially since our golf skills are non-existent).
We were led down the stairs to the basement and greeted by an unusual sight: an array of quirky wooden mini golf holes. Each hole had a different design: some more complex than others, as we were to find out some near enough impossible!
We chose a club that would lead us to glory! Each club had its own name, and I went for the aptly named "Henry Studmuffin". We then made our way through the course starting at the easiest (which I still didn't make in one hit) not that I'm bitter, then made our way through the course. It was great fun and quite a unusually brilliant thing to find a mini golf course, with a bar in the centre of Newcastle.
The plan is for the basement space at Lane 7 to be a rotating menagerie of entertainment, so if you want to have a go, do it sooner rather than later. Our team's best score for the course was a respectable 17; let us know if you manage to do better!
Peacock Carter's 2014 ecommerce seminar sees businesses show off their competition
Our ecommerce seminar earlier this week was a great success with a range of businesses making use of ecommerce at different levels in attendance.
There was a true cross section of the businesses who run online shops these days: from long established family businesses, to hobbyists looking to start a business, and ecommerce managers in charge of their company's own digital storefront.
We covered topics from conversion to search engine optimisation to ensure business owners were making the most of their online stores.
As an established web design agency with a focus on the Magento and WooCommerce platforms, Peacock Carter were able to offer our years of insight in to the world of ecommerce.
Finally, thank you to all of those who attended. We're looking to run another seminar in May, so if you have any ideas of topics you would like to see discussed, please do let us know!