18 Thu

Magento 1.4With the recent release of Magento version 1.4, many people are having trouble upgrading their current Magento installation, or installing their template on a fresh Magento 1.4 installation. A quick search online and you’ll find countless entries and posts stating that Magento 1.4 is buggy, not working, horrible, etc. Particularly when you browse through the Magento forums.

In fact Magento 1.4 is different than the last previous stable version (1.3.2.4) but you should definitely be able to upgrade your installation, or install your custom template on a Magento 1.4 installation! Here are the most common issues and how to fix them!

Magento modern theme 1.4

This relates to the following issues:

  • Can’t install Modern Theme through Magento Connect
    • Get error “magento-core/Interface_Frontend_Default_Modern requires package “magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules” (version >= 1.3.2.2, version <= 1.3.3, excluded versions: 1.3.3), installed version is 1.4.0.0
      Install Errors
      No valid packages found
      PEAR ERROR: install failed
  • Can’t upgrade Modern Theme through Magento Connect
    • Get similar error as above
  • etc

As of now, there is no good way to install or upgrade the Modern Theme via Magento Connect. BUT you should definitely be able to get it by installing a fresh Magento 1.4 installation.

Magento 1.4 comes by default with the default theme, the modern theme, and the iphone optimized theme. However, you’d have to install Magento manually and NOT use the downloader (as this will include the default theme only). Here is one way to install Magento 1.4 manually:

  1. Download all the files on your computer and upload them on your server
  2. Create a database and a database user and grant that user all permissions to the database. Make sure to write down your database name, database user name, and database user password.
  3. Go to the URL that points to your server and follow the instructions to complete Magento installation

Can’t access admin, blank page, products won’t load, error, etc

Most issues will be resolved once you reindex Magento data and refresh all Magento cache. To reindex Magento data follow these quick steps:

  1. Go to System>Index Management
  2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
  3. Under “Action” select “Reindex Data” and click submit

To refresh all Magento cache following these quick steps:

  1. Go to System>Configuration and
  2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
  3. Under “action” click on “refresh” and click submit
  4. Then click on these buttons:
    1. Flush Magento Cache
    2. Flush Cache Storage
    3. Fluch Catalog Images Cache
    4. Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache

Upgrading your existing theme (modern or else)

Obviously I cannot cover here all the possible problems and issues that may arise when upgrading your particular template to be compatible with Magento 1.4. However, I found that the most common issue is “Categories not working after upgrading to 1.4″. This relates to the error people get when clicking on some categories: “Error processing your request” followed by a number.

To fix that, you’ll need to do 2 things:

1. First, edit your toolbar.phtml file located under app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/template/catalog/product/list. Take the updated toolbar.phtml from the new 1.4 default theme (located under app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/list) and use it in your theme. Then edit that file to apply any styling you had in your original toolbar.phtml file. Another way of doing it is editing your toolbar.phml file to use the right class names and code (you can compare with the default one and take it from there).

2. Second, open catalog.xml located under app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/layout/ and find this line:

<block type="catalog/product_list_toolbar" name="product_list_toolbar" template="catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml">

And underneath insert this code:

<block type="page/html_pager" name="product_list_toolbar_pager"/>

Note: most likely the above code is present in 2 places in the catalog.xml file so make sure to add the new line underneath in both places.

And that should do it!

Category : Questions, Web Design, Web Development
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44 Comments

  1. cee carvajal
    February 18, 2010 at 11:47 pm

    This article is a life saver. You should send it to magento or something because so many people are struggling with. There are over 17 pages of complaints and half fixes on the forum but nothing a precise as this explaination.

    Thank you so much!!

    C

    Reply
    • Noam
      February 21, 2010 at 8:31 pm

      You’re welcome!

      Reply
  2. Magento Developer
    February 21, 2010 at 8:33 pm

    You saved me! Thank you very much!

    Reply
  3. DCA
    February 22, 2010 at 11:49 am

    Great article but you forget to explain how to solve toolbar problem at results catalogsearch page.

    Reply
    • Noam
      February 22, 2010 at 9:30 pm

      @DCA – what bug are you having on the search result page?

      Reply
  4. Jesse
    February 22, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Noam
      February 22, 2010 at 9:31 pm

      @jesse – you’re welcome!

      Reply
  5. Tomakun
    February 22, 2010 at 8:18 pm

    Thanks for this useful post. I’d like to point out the part at the end of the article, where you’re speaking about the catalog.xml update. You write “underneath insert this code:”

    While the Magento Releases notes states “should be replaced into”. Now this is very different to me. Which one should we use?

    Reply
    • Noam
      February 22, 2010 at 9:29 pm

      @Tomakun – I’ve personally tested the steps in this post so I would go that route

      Reply
  6. AmDD
    February 24, 2010 at 10:47 am

    DCA is looking at the search results page which does not show pagination after fixing the pagination on category display pages. The catalogsearch.xml file does not have a similar place where you might add the line:

    So the question remains how to fix the toolbar for pagination in the search results page…

    Reply
  7. Bobbie
    February 26, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    Yes, please let us know how to fix the lack of pagination on the advanced search results. Thanks!

    Reply
  8. Mick
    February 27, 2010 at 7:51 am

    Thanks for the tips, that’s cleared a few things up!

    You’ve a slight typo in the last section:
    app/design/frontent/default/yourthemename/template/catalog/product/list

    frontent instead of frontend

    Reply
    • Noam
      February 27, 2010 at 11:07 am

      @Mick – Thanks! I fixed the typo

      Reply
  9. eCommerce-Themes.com
    March 2, 2010 at 11:32 am

    It might be worth mentioning that the amount of work related to upgrading your theme would greatly depend on how many custom templates you had to modify from the default Magento theme.

    Theme with mostly css change will require limited fixes related to css.

    Reply
  10. Paddy
    March 3, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    Thanks for the info on this page it really helped me, along with this page which got my upgrade to 1.3 working http://askmatt.co.uk/blog/2010/03/base-table-or-view-already-exists-1050-table-already-exists-upgrade-1-3-2-4-to-1-4-0-1-failed-how-to-fix/

    Reply
  11. Rick
    March 5, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    Had the same error issues, this comment from the Magento Forums helped me out:

    “For anyone still having the problem after upgrading to 1.4.0.x where you only see the Dashboard and System Menus in the admin area (and also your products are not showing), this is what fixed it for me.

    1) Make sure your magento directory has full privileges for the user that the installer is running under
    2) SSH to your magento directory
    3) Run the following commands:
    a) ./pear mage-setup .
    b) ./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest
    c) ./pear upgrade-all

    *Note that in command a, the period is not a mistake, you must include that

    4) Delete the contents of the Cache and Sessions folders
    *Note that if you delete the entire Cache directory, you have to make sure you re-allow write permissions to the folder after the system recreates it, otherwise you will get an error when you go to the web page

    5) Log in to the admin area. If your navigation is back, you’re in good shape.
    6) There should be a warning message telling you to re-index your catalog, go to Index Management and re-index everything ”

    11th Comment Down, by mmm7L:

    http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/76543/

    Reply
  12. Rick
    March 5, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    Any ideas why I can’t pull a custom template for root in one of my CMS pages, specifically home?

    Reply
  13. Brandon
    March 9, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    Thank you for this post! This saved me a ton of development time.

    Reply
  14. AmDD
    March 17, 2010 at 7:07 am

    The app/design/frontend/base/default/template/contacts/form.phtml has changed in 1.4
    It now contains a hidden field called hideit which must be in the the form for it to validate. Otherwise you get the “Unable to submit your request. Please, try again later” error.

    Reply
  15. Greg
    March 18, 2010 at 7:26 am

    Have you come across a problem with creating products? Something happened to my installation of Magento and i’m now not seeing all the product attributes (name, price, weight, etc) when i try to create a new simple product.

    I’ve installed a fresh copy of Magento on my webserver and using a new database but i’m seeing the same thing. Very frustrating!

    Reply
    • Noam
      April 6, 2010 at 9:25 pm

      @Greg – try reindexing all the data (it’s a new feature in Magento 1.4). That’s most likely what your problem is. The steps to reindex the data are explained in the post

      Reply
  16. Richard
    March 22, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    The fix seems to work well, however I made the mistake to directly copy the fix from this page into my xml file, resulting into a new xml error.

    The code on this site is formatted with different quotation marks so be sure to correct those in your catalog.xml to avoid any new errors.

    Reply
    • Noam
      May 13, 2010 at 11:59 am

      Thanks for pointing that out. I fixed the formatting of the quotation marks in the post so people can safely copy and paste the code.

      Thanks!

      Reply
  17. AmDD
    April 5, 2010 at 6:19 am

    The app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sendfriend/send.phtml has changed in 1.4
    Add the line
    getBlockHtml(‘formkey’)?> somewhere inside the form for it to pass validation and actually send the form.
    No error message will be shown if it is missing the email just will not be sent.

    Reply
    • Noam
      April 6, 2010 at 9:22 pm

      @AmDD – thanks for the comments!

      Reply
  18. Mike Duan
    May 2, 2010 at 3:01 pm

    This is a very helpful resource.

    Reply
  19. Pierre-Alix Tremblay
    May 17, 2010 at 9:25 am

    Hi,
    I can’t access admin CMS>Page so I try to go to System>Index Management but I can’t access too !
    I’ve got : “There has been an error processing your request”

    How can I fix it ?

    Thanks !

    Reply
    • Noam
      May 17, 2010 at 2:03 pm

      Delete all files and folder under var/cache/ and var/sessions/ and delete your browser cache and cookies then log back in the admin. It should work.

      Reply
  20. Magento
    May 20, 2010 at 8:47 am

    Life saving article indeed! Thanks! :)

    Reply
  21. manawor
    June 19, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    Hello,

    i have just upgraded to magento1.3 to magento1.4 version fixed couple of bugs now i am stuck to a cart page i am getting following error , we have multiple store setup and each has its own domain .

    Fatal error: Call to a member function getGrandTotal() on a non-object in /var/www/vhosts/comitstores.com/subdomains/dev/httpdocs/app/code/core/Mage/Tax/Block/Checkout/Grandtotal.php on line 44

    beside above error i am noticing my unit price and subtotal is not getting calculated its all zero. i have checked at admin side for inverntory ,price and taxes are setup correctly .No idea what to do .

    any help would be apprecuated.

    thanks

    manawor

    Reply
  22. ChiefAir
    August 2, 2010 at 5:36 pm

    Thank you for the instructions on toolbar.phtml, now I have to massage the CSS into life and we’ll be back up! I have a few other places where I can see this will break, will know what to look for.

    Reply
  23. omur
    October 11, 2010 at 6:43 am

    How can I update magento 1.3.x theme to magento 1.4.x

    Reply
  24. Download Magento Themes
    December 18, 2010 at 12:44 am

    Thanks for this! Its really very much beneficial..

    Reply
  25. Naresh
    January 10, 2011 at 1:23 am

    I just upgraded from 1.3.2 to 1.4.0.1 via magento connect and I am not able to see anything on the site. I am not able to access the admin pages or the front end. This is disaster I am not sure what I need to do ?? Please help.

    Reply
  26. Naresh
    January 10, 2011 at 1:31 am

    I was able to get a screen shot when loading happen and it shows an error “Integrity Constraint Violation : 1062 Duplicate entry “109-General” for key attribute_set_id” ..Any ideas ???

    Reply
  27. Brandon
    February 1, 2011 at 9:53 am

    I just upgraded from 1.30 to 1.4.2 everything seems to work fine but except that I cannot add items to cart, any thought on this?

    Reply
  28. magento webwinkel
    March 31, 2011 at 5:17 pm

    Thanks for this, we still work with Magento 1.4 because 1.5 is stable but a lot of extensions are not working very well.

    Reply
  29. Sajid
    April 24, 2011 at 6:47 pm

    Well ,

    to be honest when magento update thier version they should write any thing for changes require in code or for theme but they dont we sometimes make money with redoing work for clients but as wise development way or with hard client we got issues , and their support is also worst either on forums,chat or Gold Support

    we wrote our bad experience with them in words here
    http://www.dacoders.com/2011/04/24/magento-thier-support-good-bad/

    Reply
  31. teo
    January 16, 2013 at 5:06 am

    I had upgraded Magento 1.4 directly to 1.7 version very successfully ordering Cart2Cart service. I can say, it is really a great time saving tool. Because all that bugs and errors… ! I was sated with them during my previous upgrading from 1.3 to 1.4- I had spent over a week to import data manually

    Reply
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