A LiteMage Troubleshooting Showcase

In this troubleshooting showcase, we will be looking at a case where a Magento site was having logged in/out issues, comparison issues, and disappearing banner issues as well as the troubleshooting processes and recommended solutions to fix them.

It is assumed that you are already familiar with Magento Layouts, blocks, and templates as well as how to make proper changes to them. You can find out more from the Magento 1.x Developer Reference.

On the home page, there is a Welcome/Login/Create an Account section at the top. If a user named Sam logs in, we expect to see Welcome, Sam! Logout. With LiteMage installed, we were instead seeing Welcome Sam! Login or Create an Account. In this case, LiteMage cached the Login or Create an Account text for a logged out user and served that to logged in Sam.

This issue was also happening in reverse. LiteMage would cache Welcome, Sam! Logout for logged in Sam, and then serve Welcome, ! Logout to different logged out users.

Looking further, we saw that these cases were all occurring on sites that used the SM Market theme. It looked like a template problem.

LiteMage punches holes for user-specific information like “Sam,” the login button, and the welcome tag. The resulting ESI blocks are processed in small chunks.

With this particular template, some global PHP variables initialized in header.phtml and social.phtml were not available in these small chunks. The two template files needed to be updated to initialize them:

[app/design/frontend/sm_market/default/template]# vi page/html/header.phtml
[app/design/frontend/sm_market/default/template]# vi page/html/social.phtml

The following was added to the top of the two template files:

if (empty($var_yttheme)) {
    include (dirname(dirname(__FILE__)).'/sm/yt_prepar.php');
}

Problem solved!

See Uninitialized PHP Vars In Injected Blocks for more detailed information about this type of issue.

Once the initialization problem was solved, we needed to punch a big hole instead of small one. Logging into the Magento Admin and entering LiteMage config, we added header in Customized Block Names for “toplinks” Tag.

We also saw “compare” in a toplinks block, so we added compare to Additional Purge Tags for “toplinks” Blocks as well.

For more info on this step, check out Logged In Usernames/Cart Items Shown On Other User's Pages.

At this point we have fixed the logged in/out issue. Great! Except now the banner has disappeared from the homepage.

After some further investigation, we find that the header template included logic to check if it is displaying on a frontend page or not. If it is not a frontend page, then the banner will not display. This stops us from simply punching a big hole for the header, like we did earlier.

We now need to go back and “fix” the login links.

After making a copy of header4.phtml, the header style file, we open it to begin modifying.

[app/design/frontend/sm_market/default/template/page/html]vi header4.phtml

Inside we can see the “log in” link mixed into the header template. That logic needs to be taken out and put in its own block/template so we can both hole punch it as a private block AND keep the rest of the header publicly cached.

<div class="yt-header-top">
  <div class="container">
    <div class="row">
      <div class="header-top-1 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
        <div class="inner">
          <p class="welcome-msg"><?php echo $this->getChildHtml('welcome') ?> <?php echo $this->getAdditionalHtml() ?></p>
          <div class="login-regis">
            <?php if(!$this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn() ){ ?>
            <a title="<?php echo $this->__("Login"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo $this-
               >getUrl('customer/account/login/') ?>">
               <?php echo $this->__("Login"); ?>
          </a>
          <?php echo $this->__("or"); ?>
          <?php } else{ ?>
          <a title="<?php echo $this->__("Logout"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo $this-
             >getUrl('customer/account/logout') ?>">
             <?php echo $this->__("Logout"); ?>
        </a>
        <?php } ?>
        <?php
        //if(Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->isLoggedIn())
        if(!$this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn() ){ ?>
        <a title="<?php echo $this->__("Create an Account"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo 
           Mage::getBaseUrl(); ?>customer/account/create/">
           <?php echo $this->__("Create an Account"); ?></a>
        <?php } ?>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="header-top-2 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
    <?php if($this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('v4-call-us')->toHtml()) { ?>
    <?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('v4-call-us')->toHtml(); ?>
    <?php } ?>
  </div>
  <div class="header-top-3 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
    <div class="inner">
      <div class="head-quicklink">
        <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('topLinks');?>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

We copy the code inside <div class=“login-regis”> and move it int our new welcomelogin.phtml file.

[app/design/frontend/sm_market/default/template/page/html]# vi welcomelogin.phtml

<?php if(!$this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn() ){ ?>
<a title="<?php echo $this->__("Login"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo $this-
   >getUrl('customer/account/login/') ?>">
   <?php echo $this->__("Login"); ?>
</a>
<?php echo $this->__("or"); ?>
<?php } else{ ?>
<a title="<?php echo $this->__("Logout"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo $this-
   >getUrl('customer/account/logout') ?>">
   <?php echo $this->__("Logout"); ?>
</a>
<?php } ?>
<?php
//if(Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->isLoggedIn())
if(!$this->helper('customer')->isLoggedIn() ){ ?>
<a title="<?php echo $this->__("Create an Account"); ?>" class="btn-head" href="<?php echo 
   Mage::getBaseUrl(); ?>customer/account/create/">
   <?php echo $this->__("Create an Account"); ?></a>
<?php } ?>

We now add our new “welcomelogin” block in the header block…

[app/design/frontend/sm_market/default/layout]# vi page.xml

<block type="page/html_header" name="header" as="header">
….
…. After welcome block
<block type="core/template" name="welcomelogin" as="welcomelogin" template="page/html/welcomelogin.phtml"/>

…and update the header4.phtml file to reference the new “welcomelogin” block where the “log in” logic used to be:

<div class="yt-header-top">
  <div class="container">
    <div class="row">
      <div class="header-top-1 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
        <div class="inner">
          <p class="welcome-msg"><?php echo $this->getChildHtml('welcome') ?> <?php echo $this->getAdditionalHtml() ?></p>
          <div class="login-regis">
            <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('welcomelogin'); ?>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="header-top-2 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
        <?php if($this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('v4-call-us')->toHtml()) { ?>
        <?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('v4-call-us')->toHtml(); ?>
        <?php } ?>
      </div>
      <div class="header-top-3 col-lg-4 col-md-4 col-sm-6 col-xs-12">
        <div class="inner">
          <div class="head-quicklink">
            <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('topLinks');?>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Finally we go back to our LiteMage Configuration in the Magento Admin Panel and add “welcomelogin” to Customized Block Names for “welcome” Tag.

Voila! The banner is back and LiteMage is operating at 100%.

Are you running into complicated LiteMage issues? Does the above showcase seem too overwhelming to tackle on your own?

In cases such as these we recommend engaging with our experienced LiteMage Support Engineers/LiteMage Developers for a formal investigation and support services. This service is fully refundable if we cannot get LiteMage completely working for your site.