Announcements

Australia 3.0 and Feeds Generator

Wed Apr 29, 2015 by Chris Norton in Announcements

We are happy to announce a couple of major releases today. Users of the Australia extension will be pleased to hear that we have released version 3.0, containing substantial new features and many minor enhancements. Additionally, the new Feeds Generator extension has been launched, allowing you to easily produce feeds of your Magento catalogue for the major shopping comparison services like Google Shopping.

Australia

The 3.0 release of the Australia extension is a major release that adds many new features for Australian stores. Major changes made in the 3.0 release include:

Algolia Magento Extension Released

Thu Apr 16, 2015 by Andrew Rollason in Announcements

Algolia is an exciting new hosted search service that provides instant search results as you type. The service is reliable, with a 99.99% uptime SLA and a distributed service network that delivers lightning fast results no matter where you are in the world. It provides an easy to use administration interface which allows you to quickly and easily check on the data and settings of your search indexes, as well as viewing analytics and logs. Pricing for such a powerful service is very reasonable, with plans starting from as low as $49 per month, putting it well within reach of smaller site operators.

With all these features in mind, we set out to develop a Magento extension that would allow merchants to provide instant search results for their customers. The extension replaces the existing search box in the header with an Algolia search box, which adds an autocomplete dropdown containing both category and product suggestions. The suggestions are updated in real-time with each keystroke, allowing customers to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

The search results page then provides real-time search results as the user updates their query, filters, sorts, pagination, or view modes. This allows them to immediately narrow their results and find the products that they are looking for without needing to wait for any page reloads. Categories will display in a tiered structure, allowing customers to drill down to find the specific categories they are looking for, while still providing context. Price filtering can be achieved using a slider, making it easy to experiment with different ranges.

To deliver maximum performance, search results are rendered on the client side using HandlebarsJS templates. Search result data is retrieved directly from Algolia, so there is no load placed on Magento and server resources are preserved for handling other requests. Templates for the default Madison Island theme are provided with the extension, however it is intended that these would be modified to match your own designs.

Several additional features are included, such as Google Sitelinks search box integration, allowing users to search your site directly from Google search result pages and land on your Algolia internal search results page. A custom widget allows a search input to be inserted into CMS content, which is great for prompting users to search on pages like an empty cart or 404.

The integration with Algolia has been designed to honour Magento's native search configuration settings, including multi-store functionality. Saving products will immediately update Algolia indexes with the new data, reducing the chance of incorrect pricing or availability information being displayed on search result pages.

A rich set of options are available to customise the search experience. These include being able to configure synonyms, adjust the instant search input delay, and order search attributes. The extension installs a new index in the backend separate from the standard "Catalog Search Index". When it is necessary to completely rebuild the search index, a common problem with Magento's core search services and other solutions is that the index will be emptied when the reindex begins. For the duration of the reindexing operation, the index will be in an inconsistent state and any search results will not include products that have not been indexed yet. To address this, our extension builds a temporary index while the old index is left in place, and when the reindex operation is complete, the newly created index replaces the old, seamlessly providing consistent and complete updated search results without interruption.

The Fontis Algolia Magento extension delivers a superior search experience. With lightning fast, accurate and relevant results, your customers will find the products they are looking for more easily than ever.

Mercator Demo Vagrant Box

Fri May 23, 2014 by Peter Spiller in Announcements

As part of our ongoing work on Mercator (a Magento Community Edition distribution launched last year), we have released a demo Vagrant box, available for immediate download. Mercator has recently been updated to merge changes from the Magento CE 1.9.0.1 release, and now includes features such as a streamlined checkout, responsive design using the Bootstrap framework, and improved search functionality. Rather than having to set up a development environment and install Mercator, the box is fully configured and ready for use. The box runs Mercator on HHVM, includes services like Redis and Elasticsearch pre-installed and configured, and uses the Magento CE 1.8 sample data.

Mercator Launched

Mon Sep 2, 2013 by Lloyd Hazlett in Announcements

Fontis is pleased to announce the release of Mercator, a community driven distribution of Magento. The Magento community has matured to the point where an amazing number of valuable open source contributions have been released, and Mercator expands upon the Community Edition feature set by bringing together the best of these extensions into a cohesive distribution. Code is now on GitHub, and already includes a number of additional features in its initial commit that have been integrated through community extensions.

Fontis Magento Blog Extension

Mon Aug 26, 2013 by Lloyd Hazlett in Announcements

Blogs are a great tool for businesses to engage with customers and publicise the latest products, promotions and services through their website, and eCommerce websites are of course no exception. There are a number of solutions for Magento that have been around for quite a long time now, but we feel there's still room for improvement when it comes to a native extension, and that's why we're pleased to announce the release of the Fontis Blog extension for Magento. With source now available on GitHub and as a package on the Fontis Blog Magento extension page, it provides a built-in blogging platform for Magento using familiar admin panel content management features.

Fontis Westpac 2.1.5: Important Update

Sun Nov 4, 2012 by Chris Norton in Announcements

We have just released an important update to the Fontis Westpac extension, which should be installed by all merchants using the PayWay service. The update includes a new Verisign certificate for the PayWay gateway which will be required in order to continue connecting to the gateway. Merchants who will be affected by this update should have already been contacted by Westpac.

In addition, we have added another small but often requested feature, and added in a credit card type selection box to the PayWay and QuickGateway settings pages in the Magento configuration. Merchants will now be able to easily configure whether they want to accept American Express, Discover and others.

MageAudit: The Magento Health Check

Tue May 22, 2012 by Chris Norton in Announcements

A successful Magento implementation requires not only development expertise and an understanding of its internals and various settings, but also systems administration knowledge to ensure that the hosting environment is configured correctly and for optimal performance. As a store owner or developer who may not be familiar with all of these areas themselves, it can therefore be difficult to check on the overall quality of a particular installation. How can the relative “health” of a Magento store be quickly and easily assessed? Introducing MageAudit, the Magento Health Check.

M2M Sync Now Supports Magento Go

Tue Apr 3, 2012 by Peter Spiller in Announcements

With its most recent update (version 1.2.10.1), our Magento-MYOB synchronisation application M2M Sync now supports Magento Go. This hosted Magento solution allows businesses to set up online stores without needing to manage their own server and implementation, and offers an enhanced set of features compared to Magento Community Edition. M2M Sync has been updated to handle these additional features, such as gift card accounts and store credit, and is an ideal solution for MYOB users who are tired of error-prone manual data entry.

Big Brown Box wins inaugural ORIA

Mon Jul 12, 2010 by Lloyd Hazlett in Announcements

Our congratulations to everyone at Big Brown Box, who were the winners of the inaugural Best Site Design award last week at the Online Retailer Industry Awards 2010. The awards were extremely competitive and drawn from over 170 nominated online businesses around Australia; the Best Site Design category in particular boasted some of the most innovative online retailers in the Australian market.

The Big Brown Box website and the key reasons for its win were described by the ORIA judging panel:

Australia Day Extension Release

Tue Jan 26, 2010 by Chris Norton in Announcements

In addition to the feed generators, there are some incremental improvements to the rest of the extension, most notably in the BPAY and direct deposit functionality, which now have their own order statuses to help administrators determine at a glance which payment method was used to place an order.

We hope these changes will continue to provide Australian online retailers with commonly desired functionality for running a Magento website in Australia. We've had great feedback on the extension so far, and are keen to hear any comments or suggestions that members of the community may have for future versions.