<?php

$soapUrl='http://www.testdomain.com/';

$apiUser='karen';

$apiPass='my_api_key';

$proxy = new SoapClient($soapUrl.'api/soap?wsdl');
$sessionId = $proxy->login($apiUser, $apiPass);

$productArr = $proxy->call($sessionId,

                   'catalog_category.assignedProducts', array('33'));

$extnDetails=array();

foreach ($productArr as $product) {

  $productListing = $proxy->call($sessionId, 'product.info', $product['sku']);
  $extnDetails[] = array (

         'name'=>$productListing['name'],

         'url' =>'http://www.testdomain.com/'.$productListing['url_path']

  );
}

print_r($extnDetails);

$proxy->endSession($sessionId);

The output is something like:

[name] => Nike Shoes      [url] => http://www.testdomain.com/nike_shoes.html )

[name] => Adidas Trainers [url] => http://www.testdomain.com/adidas_shoes.html )

A little over 3 weeks ago I posted a blog about Magento extensions, and how I felt that there was not enough regulation around the marketplace, or enough information for merchants, web design agencies to make informed decisions.

A few things happened after:

1. The community responded. Mainly around twitter, but also in the blog comments, people elsewhere had opinions on this topic. We showed we cared, and we understood
2. Magento responded. Why? Well only they can answer, and maybe not everyone will believe, but my opinion is that they know there is a need to improve and they appreciate they don’t have all the answers
3. We had a Google+ Hangout, views were aired, people could get in the room, a few couldn’t

Thanks to everyone who got involved, who emailed, and who showed their concern and their passion for Magento.  I was pretty surprised tbh.

What happened in the hangout?

So what now, what were the conclusions, where can we go from here?

Quite a few things were raised in the Google+ Hangout. The main areas seemed to me to be:

1. Magento Connect – we can all see that this needs improvement so that merchants have more information
2. Reviews & Ratings – clearly on Magento Connect its not working. How can we move this forwards?
3. Training – We need more magento developers, more self-help blogs, more support for companies trying to expand their knowledge & staff
4. Improving Accountability – How can we identify the bad extensions/companies, but also help these where required so their can improve
5. Code Reviews – can we ‘socially’ do code reviews?

Where are we now?

A few of the tangibles I’ve seen coming out of this are:

1. @IvanChepurnyi created a documentation draft on Github for a possible extension code review site
2. User Voice page being setup for feedback
3. The hashtag #extnreview has persisted, though it has to be said from quite a small core group of people
4. My staff have become even more motivated to learn, improve and evolve – thats a great by-product I didn’t expect at all!
5. Magento are going to discuss, with a sub-section of the community, the changes they are planning/undertaking around Magento Connect and get feedback from us on it

Interestingly this week Magento suspended the Trusted Extensions Program until further notice. Was that pre-planned, I’m not sure.

I spoke with Magento/X.commerce whilst at Shop.org. Quite a few things were discussed, this is not a topic you can open and close in an hour meeting.

I believe from those discussions that Magento understand that they need to provide some boundaries from which the marketplace can hopefully mature responsibly, but I also think rightly they do not wish to constrain it too much. As that is, after all, the beauty of ‘Open Source’ and a community, it needs freedom.

Where do we go from here?

I realise I’m glossing over quite a bit of detail. Why? Because this isn’t about me or my thoughts, it is about us as a community. If its just one voice it’s no voice.

From a purely personal perspective I think we do need a central area we can talk, collaborate, throw ideas, pass information back to Magento, maybe kick start things ourselves where we have shared interest or shared benefits.

Quite possibly this is the User Voice site.

The big question is:

Do you want to join me?

My vow is that I will go on the site within the next week and put down some of the ideas I’ve fed back to Magento (and some that I haven’t). If no-one else decides to join in, then well its just a waste of a few hours, and I’ll continue on my merry way

And my concerns? Well I think we had this as a comment on the blog, we all mean well but we are all busy. We need to make time for this, and maybe sometimes we have delays, work gets in the way, we just want to sleep. But I hope people can see that this is our future. We need to help improve the Magento Eco-System, because it is in all our interests to do so.

Lastly, I think we really need to be careful we don’t create a ‘club’.  I see from my own experiences that there is a need to help developers ranging from those that joined yesterday to those that have been around for 5 years.  We cannot discriminate, we cannot afford arrogance or favouritism.  We all need to ask ourselves whether we can improve, and I think we would all say yes to that.

This led me to think about my customers, and the interesting characters I have met over the years.  Here I give you an insight into some of them.

- There was the guy that wanted me to write a shipping extension which used buses in Africa. Basically the price of the package varied based on the bus stop it was picked up at and the one it got off at.  He didnt take up my offer

- Another chap from an island off Africa (I cant recall its name) who told me he was opening the first e-commerce shop there, and in Magento.  He showed me pictures of his baby

- The chap from Brooklyn I met at Imagine 2011, we were both fed up of networking and talking shop so he told me about his young family and I told him about mine. He later become a customer

- The really annoying woman who pestered me forever and nearly closed my business because she kept stretching my extensions til they would work from here to the moon. I ended up writing her a completely custom one. She became one of my best friends

- The guy from San Diego who was an ‘entrepreneur’ and thought we could do great things together until I gave him the quote

- The many men from Dallas, Houston way who charm me with their drawling voices and great character

- The ‘older’ merchants, I spoke to one last week, a guy who had built his shop ‘offline’ and was now joining the world of e-commerce. He invited me to his house to meet his family and showed me a great restaurant we should visit

- The man on chat who lived with lots of dogs, all alone. He kept coming in for support, I think he liked me

- The woman with the whirlpools, she was scary

- The coffee guy, you know who you are. Interesting, articulate, helpful and honest. Someone I aspire to be like

- The chap who first asked me to fix tablerates, and left me with the problem for the weekend. Then it was solved and Matrixrate was born

- Dave, the guy that kept hasselling me whilst I was in a hut in Yellowstone in 2009 with my family, I ended up writing an extension that I’ve never had to reproduce since, god it was complicated

- The man who said he wouldnt pay $40 for an extension, then proceeded to go on getafreelancer.com and ask people to build it for less. He came back 6 weeks later

Whoever said working in technology was boring….

The goal of this meeting is to get on the table the major concerns around extensions, and get a list of ideas around how we could act as a community to improve this space.

1. Overview – 5 mins
2. Major concerns – what’s the problem with extensions today? – 15 mins
3. Ideas for improvement –15 mins
4. Wrap up summary and reality check – 10 mins
5. Plan of actions – 5 mins

Location

I’ve spoken a few people and the consensus seems to be that Skype will fall over with more than a few participants.  So for today’s meeting at 10am PST today let’s use a Google+ Hangout and the twitter channel #extnreview.

You can watch the conversation and join in via Google+ or twitter if you would like to join in. The Hangout will be ‘on Air’ which I’m reliably informed means anyone can watch.

If you have any problems please add me on skype – webshopapps and talk to me there.

Magento staff have moved on, we now have 5000 extensions and the issue remains, in fact I think its got worse.

What are the Problems?

Let’s start by saying there are many many great extensions out there and some great extension companies as well.  If there weren’t Magento would not be as successful as it is today and I wouldn’t have a business as the trust in extns would be lost.

But, based on my experiences with WebShopApps customers, there are issues with quite a few Magento extensions aswell. The most common issues seem to be:

1. No support and/or documentation
2. Extension stops being maintained
3. Support turnaround time is slow (>2 working days per email)
4. Support packages integral to extension sale (no support without)
5. Codebase is poor, resulting in many bugs and problems with extension conflicts

Are these issues that are specific to Magento? I very much doubt that, I expect this is a problem with all e-commerce platforms, maybe an even bigger problem as there is less transparency on some. Its certainly an issue you see with the Apple iPhone Apps, so its not unique and it’s hard to solve.

What about Magento Connect?

You could argue reasonably that Magento Connect is the portal for reviewing extensions and companies. After all it has a review capability and extensions are ‘checked’ by Magento staff. But its open to many forms of abuse and fixing. I won’t detail them here as it will maybe encourage more, but let’s just say the figures and reviews aren’t always what they seem.

It’s a well known fact that you have to work 10 times as hard to get someone to leave you a good review as getting a bad review – customers who are happy or of that disposition where they dont complain also often don’t go out of their way to give praise either, they just want to get on with their day-2-day work and who can blame them?

What has Magento Done?

Magento has introduced many initiatives to help improve Magento Extensions. Their efforts include:

1. Developer Certification
2. Free training materials for developers to self-learn
3. Trusted Extensions
4. Greater checks on Magento Connect applications
5. Community Managers being involved at grass root level
6. Industry Partner Programs

But Magento are busy, having eBay around must take up a fair bit of their time nowadays(!) and they are coping with massive growth, it is impossible for them to be all things to all people. Maybe we have a responsibility to assist here?

What Can WebShopApps Do?

Back in August WebShopApps launched the AppShop which has been extremely well received. The aim here is to market the top 50-70 paid extensions, with a focus on companies/developers that have a high level of customer service and good quality supported extensions.

But this doesn’t really go far enough, really what is required is a central place where people can easily get detailed information about extensions and the extension companies.

Can WE Change Things?

So it’s easy to complain, to blame magento, or to blame extension companies. But can WE change things together and improve the situation here?  Can we ‘raise the bar’ and push extension companies to improve their offerings? Can we give objective unbiased information to extension buyers?

I actually think this is possible. The reason I think this is because I think the Magento Community is one of the best tech communities in the world, and I know we really care about this. How do I know – well see the twitter comments from last Saturday – it exploded when this conversation started there.

The vast majority of us want to evolve, we want to improve and we want to make Magento great. This isn’t about self-promotion, or marketing, its about being the best engineer we can, about how we can introduce process and standards to improve the e-commerce space for today and tomorrow.

How do I get Involved?

So how can you help?  Well we need to pool ideas and come up with a plan. Maybe we have an extension review panel, maybe we have an extension provider directory, I’m not sure. It’s not my decision, it needs to be a joint effort for it to truly succeed. I don’t see myself as running the show here, I helped the Magento Meetup London back on it’s feet and now I’m no longer required as an organiser – that’s what I hope will happen here because this isn’t about me or WebShopApps.

I’ve organised a skype meeting for 10AM PST on Wednesday 5th Sept. Contact me via email or twiter to get involved, or simply add me on skype (id is WebShopApps) and send me a message.  I am in the process of getting a Google+ circle together.

If you want to get involved make your voice heard, leave a comment here, tell us your ideas, it sounds corny but I do believe we can make a difference here. Thanks to all on twitter for your contributions so far, its been fantastic and inspiring.

Magento inc – we would love to get your involvement, your support and your ideas. I see this as very much a collaboration, us working with Magento to improve it, I hope that’s understood. If we are doing something that you have on your roadmap and you can see issues then let us know, I’m sure we all have better things to do if thats the case.

WebShopApps became Gold Industry Partners with Magento September 2011, and for us it’s been well worth the investment.  We had never done any marketing prior to joining this programme, and part of me at the time felt maybe it would be a waste of money as we were already successful and ‘doing our thing’.

Where has the accreditation helped us most:

1. Customers large and small trust us more – they can see we are reputable and that we have been successful enough to get to this level
2. Other industry partners are more willing to talk to us – before we become a partner we found it quite hard to talk to Shipping companies. Now we can refer to our status and it opens doors
3. We have a point of contact in Magento – I believe this is invaluable
4. Access to the Enterprise Platform – we can now conduct thorough testing on all versions of this platform as part of our license

The blog by Sonassi refers to the fact anyone can become a partner.  Well yes this is true.

But you will find that people in this business are intelligent. They understand the ones that have bought the badge through having big company backing or venture capital. They will understand the real businesses like WebShopApps, Blue Acorn, Classy Llama and Unleaded Software who have worked long and hard to build a business based on great customer service, great products, and sound software engineering practises. Our customers are clever, they read all the signals, not just one.

Anyone can claim to be anything, people with backing can buy anything, but slowly the cracks show.

We embrace the partnership program. Would I join if I was just starting out? No – build your business and build your customers, then once you have traction and want to expand your reach definitely look at joining to get that stamp of approval. You won’t regret it IMO.

I should also add I believe this is just the dawn of these programmes, they will continue to improve over time, I think Magento does a great deal of listening to the partners and tries to take on board our feedback – they know its not perfect, and sometimes the machine turns more slowly than our fast paced businesses would like. But hey its a start and I thank them for the opportunity.

WebShopApps is based in the UK and we sell extensions all over the world, so like many eCommerce businesses, we have had to get our head around VAT rules.

Our understanding is that:

1. VAT is charged at your local VAT rate to all non-VAT registered customers based in the EU
2. For VAT registered business customers outside of your country in the EU, VAT is NOT charged ( they instead pay it themselves at their local rate)
3. For customers outside of the EU, no VAT is charged

More information on the UK VAT rules are available from HM Revenue & Customs

If you already have your tax rules setup for the EU (1 & 3 above), you can skip the next section and jump down to ‘what about VAT registered business customers?’

How has WebShopApps set up VAT in Magento?

1. First we have created product classes in Sales>Tax >Product Tax Class – we simply use Taxable Goods but you may need to have VAT standard, VAT reduced rate and Zero rated if you have products at different tax rates
2. We then set up tax rates in Sales>Tax> Manage Tax Zones and Rates. We have one entry for every EU country with a rate of 20% and a rate for Jersey and the Channel islands of 0% (based on postcodes). We’ve exported our EU Tax Rates csv file, which you can import under Sales>Tax>Import/Export tax rates to save some time. EDIT: These rates are for B2B where tax prices are exclusive. If you are doing retail or you are using tax inclusive pricing, you will need to assign Guernsey and Jersey to their own country codes GY and JE. Thanks to Robbie Donaldson for the tip.
3. Next we created a tax rule in Sales> Tax>Manage Tax Rules that applies to our product tax class (created in step 1), our standard customer groups and includes all of the tax rates (created in step 2)
4. In our catalog we then select the Product tax class on our goods

Now we will be charging the correct amount of VAT to customers in EU countries and no VAT to customers outside of the EU.

What about VAT registered business customers?

Effectively, you have a group of customer that shouldn’t be taxed, no matter what they buy. So you need to set that at the customer tax class level.

1. Create a new customer tax class under Sales>Tax>Customer Tax Classes, ours is called EU Business Customers
2. Don’t apply any tax rules to this group, as they aren’t charged any tax
3. Create a new Customer Group under Customers>Manage Customer Groups, again ours is called EU Business Customers, and assign your tax class in step 1 to it
4. If you haven’t already, add the VAT number field to your checkout under System>Configuration> Customers>Customer Configuration> Name and Address Option > Show Tax/VAT number

Now when a customer checkouts and enters a VAT number you can verify it using the VIES service and if it’s valid, add them to the customer group you created in step 3, oh, and don’t forget to refund the VAT they got charged on their first order.
If, like us, you have hundreds of customers and many new ones each day, this manual processing quickly becomes a headache.

How can we help?

That’s why we wrote EU VAT Checker extension.
It will:

• Check a customer’s VAT number during registration, at the checkout or from the admin panel for admin orders. This is done through the VIES web service, run by the EU.
• Automatically add them to the correct customer group, so they only need to be validated once (for registered customers)
• Remove the VAT from their order

It has lots of other features and configuration options so you can control, for example, what happens when the web service is down and whether to verify the syntax first. It’s a great little extension and comes with our full recommendation because we use it ourselves!

I certainly wasn’t the only one asking ‘are they Apple or Microsoft’?

X.Commerce Innovate 2011 has been and gone. So what’s changed in Magento World?  Here are my own thoughts:

1. Magento isn’t going anywhere fast. This is a big part of X.com
2. Community, community, community. It’s a fact, we have more connections to merchants than X.com can make directly.  So by supporting developers/design agencies they are in turn supporting merchants. Hallelujah!
3. The App Store will only get bigger and hopefully smarter. This will relieve developers to do what they do best – develop
4. X.com realise that developers may be able to do things better than them. Wow, this is a real Apple moment. Amazing!
5. Magento Go is being re-shuffled to support extensions.  WebShopApps are the amongst the first to release a Trusted Extension
6. There will be more opportunities opening up to both merchants and developers. It’s exciting times for all

The overriding sense I got from Innovate 2011 was that Magento/X.com haven’t become arrogant, they are not complacent, and they know that hard work is ahead.  You can also see this amongst the design agencies large and small, the extension developers and the individual designers. I could almost spot Magento people walking around as they seemed so friendly and down-to-earth.

And, in my opinion this is one of the truly great things about Magento. It brings together people from all walks of life, this isn’t just for techies or just for corporate bods.  You can be niche, you can big or small, and you can make a difference.

The common factor amongst everyone at the #preinnovate tweetup was the sheer passion for Magento, and that we all truly love our jobs. That’s a great feeling, and we are privileged to be a part of this journey.

Having personally worked both in large companies and startups my advice to eBay is definitely to listen to the philosophy of a startup, do not hemorrhage money and become an unwieldy machine. Do not sit on your perch looking down at the masses. Follow the example of Magento, get involved, stay agile, muck in, understand, learn and evolve. Then together we will be successful.

Apple or Microsoft?  They seem to be making progress

It’s easy to rant about Magento. Buggy code, no support, no roadmap, don’t care about developers…But ultimately for quite a number of us in the e-commerce space Magento has given us a new lease of life, we may have formed a whole new company on the back of dipping the toe in the water back in 2008, and now even be a major player in the space. We may be a freelancer hacking away at home earning a very good living from that one magento extension we sell for $20. Or we may be a blogger providing information for ‘free’ and in return earning an income from consultancy. Magento has given many of us opportunities, and before we rant we must acknowledge that and thank them.

The concerns? Well the lastest news about X.Commerce does re-iterate the feeling that our destiny is not controlled by us. Magento is fluid, it’s changing, new owners, regular new releases, Magento Go, Saas, Ebay, XCommerce, X.com. How do we manage to keep up with this?

What will Magento be in 1 year from now?  I’m not sure anyone knows the true answer to that question, not even Yoav, Roy or the guys at XCommerce.  For those of us whose foundation is Magento this obviously brings questions and concern:

• How should we invest?
• Do we send our staff to magento university to get trained in Magento 1.x or will those skills be out of date in 6 months?
• Do we invest in extension development for a platform that may shrink in the future?
• How do we get our extensions on Magento Go – can we even get our extensions on there when the only interface seems to be Javascript and a REST API?
• Do we spend $$$s on developing xyz and hope we can integrate?
• Or do we just roll over and say ‘hey that was a good time but now I’m ready to move onto something more secure?

My feeling is that Magento haven’t really laid down their identity. The ideal which I believe most people want is for Magento to be a framework for e-commerce. Which doesn’t  have major change happening every month.  We want there to be clear guidelines on what Magento will develop in terms of functionality and what they will leave alone. We don’t want them one day to be developing a framework, the next to be developing an extension. We don’t want to see them acting as e-commerce solution providers, that’s what their Enterprise Partners do. We want to know what ‘open source’ really means for Magento.

If Magento don’t set these clear boundaries on what they are I believe it creates an extremely flaky foundation for the community, and as such results in less investment in Magento, people become wary and look at other business opportunities.

Magento’s perspective on this?  I’m guessing that they would say they are just building in ‘core’ functionality that is either needed to make the platform gain traction (e.g. Payment Gateways on Magento Go), or because there is so much demand that missing these out would cause issues. Or, Magento Go just isnt ready for developers yet. My answer to this is, like test-driven development, you should be doing community-driven development, don’t develop code then worry about how the community can feed in after.

I recently posted on inchoo’s blog that we had to embrace, support the changes and move forwards. I still say that, we have no option but to do this if we want to grow and have a prosperous future. No matter how we look at it we are all on the Magento train. You either get off at the next stop, or you hold on and try ensure you are keeping up.

In my little ideal world this is what I would like to see:

1. Magento become a true framework for ecommerce that supports web designers & developers
2. Re-assure us by giving us access to technical docs on how the Magento Go platform will support design & development
3. Stop ’bulking’ magento with new functionality that can/has been developed by 3rd party developers
4. Spend effort on making the framework support multiple extension installations without risk of conflict (make it more like how iPhone Apps work)
5. Setup a working group that consists of members of the community and magento staff, so that communications are improved and we have channels of people we can approach as ‘magento’ outsiders

Magento keep saying that they support Open Source, I think what people really want to see is proof of that in the new Magento Go/X.Commerce space. Then maybe we will be re-assured.

And for WebShopapps? Well, we will be staying on the train (we are needed for the parcel post!), hope they don’t push us off after this blog

Interested in people’s views on this, either leave a comment or contact me via webshopapps.com. Please treat me carefully, I mean well, honest.

There is a solution, to manually add the information to  the tables in your database. The tables are directory_country_region and directory_country_region_name.  The table directory_country_region holds the region codes and region id and then the directory_country_region_name provides the translation for you locale by using the region id  and the locale you want to provide the translation for. Magento will then pick up on this and populate a drop down list.

I’ve already done this for the UK (translated to English only). Please find the CSV files at the below links which you can upload via phpMyAdmin. Don’t forget to change the delimiter to comma rather than semi-colon as it is by default.  These are provided as is and can be freely edited.

http://www.webshopapps.com/fb/files/directory_country_region_UK.csv

http://www.webshopapps.com/fb/files/directory_country_regions_name_UK.csv