Maintenance mode is a crucial part of every site launch; besides, there are tons of other situations when you can use it. Being an essential part of Magento 1.x development, maintenance mode is also available in Magento 2. Below, I will tell you how to enable it in a case of new platform.
By using , you can easily package an app with all its dependencies into a virtual container and run it on any Linux server. Thereby, you achieve flexibility and portability impossible without containerization. As a result, the app can run nearly everywhere: on premises, bare metal, public or private clouds. While similar functionality has been available for years, a revolution in the world of software containers was caused only after the appearance of Docker in 2013. In the following post, I describe the nature of this software solution; shed light on its benefits; compare Docker with other container software; and provide a list of hosting solutions, optimized for containerization. Continue Reading
Below, I’d like to introduce you to software containers – isolated user-space instances utilized in an operating-system-level approach to virtualization. Containers separate apps from the OS and their physical infrastructure used for connecting to the network. Thus, it is possible to run multiple virtual containers on the same carnel.
Probably, you might have heard of Docker, which appeared several years ago and caused a lot of excitement among IT specialists. It is the most striking example of container software, but there are some other noteworthy solutions. I’ve described the most prominent platforms further in this blog post, but let’s start with their nature and usage.
Containers solve a bunch of problems which occur when software is moved from one computing environment to another. A staging environment, a physical machine, a developer’s computer, a data center, or a public cloud probably offer different conditions. Therefore, by using code containers, you prevent your projects from problems related to dissimilar environments. Please note that even a distinct network topology or security policies might be a reason of conflicts and limitations. But how does container software help to solve multiple problems? Continue Reading
New to agile project management and extreme programming? Then, it is time to get acquainted with test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) in PHP. Both are intended to improve the quality of your projects, as well as their responsiveness to future requirements. Below, I will explain how to implement TDD and BDD tests in PHP and show where to get all the necessary tools for these methodologies. Let’s start with some basics. Continue Reading
Today we are going to talk about Linux server distributions. The open-source nature of Linux is the main reason for the wide variety of available distros. Each Linux distribution is designed with a slightly different set of features. As a result, some distros are often used as the best linux server solutions, while the others are less suitable for this purpose. So what is the most reliable Linux web server option? Below you will find the answer. There are 10 Linux servers described in the following article. Additionally, you will find LAMP / LEMP stack manuals related to every distribution. Continue Reading
There is one annoying problem in Magento – the url rewrite indexer creates tons of unnecessary custom rewrites for products with duplicate url_keys. This happens during every indexer run. As a result, the size of the core_url_rewrite table grows to enormous sizes. Please note that the problem is typical for Magento 1.7 – 1.9 and its above versions. Below, I will explain how to fix this bug with the help of our patch. But first of all let’s start with one real world example. Continue Reading
We wanted to introduce you to our partner – . We recently established our partnership with them to bring our extensions and Magento services to their clients. Continue Reading
There are a lot of tools out there to turn learning into a game. The process when game thinking, game mechanics or whole games are used in non-game contexts is called gamification. Nowadays, specialists can gamify almost everything from customers interaction with a website to education. They turn routine processes into fun to improve user engagement, make learning more effective, and provide new unique user experience. As coders always were hardcore gamers, the appearance of gamified coding programs and courses was inevitable. Nowadays, there are dozens of video games which purpose is learning programming. To become a good coder, you just need a right game. Of course, it works better with theoretical courses but in this post we will tell you about games. Continue Reading
OPcache is a code caching module, which improves PHP performance. It uses shared memory to store precompiled script bytecode, as a result there is no need for PHP to load and parse scripts on every request. OPcache is bundled with PHP starting from 5.5.0. The module is also available in PECL for PHP 5.2-5.4. By using optimised OPcache settings, you can significantly improve the performance of your Magento website. In this post we will show you how to do this. Continue Reading
Unfortunately, CSS has a number of limitations. It can easily become a mess of overrides and repetitions. At the same time, the simplicity of CSS often hinders the development process. The solution of this problem comes from CSS preprocessors. They add many useful features that are unavailable in CSS from the beginning. The most popular solutions are SASS and LESS. There are a lot of significant differences between them, but first of all we’re going to look how CSS preprocessors work in general. Continue Reading
