As with major releases, there are nearly three hundred bug fixes in this latest edition in addition to a few new features and improvements. The two highlights include native support for MAP and persistent shopping cart. The latter essentially means that a user’s shopping session is saved regardless of their browser or hardware (PC, mobile, etc). See the full list over at the Release Notes page.

Please note that there are some known issues with the release, including one that is of particular relevance to many of our clients: Fedex Ground shipping labels are printing incorrect tracking numbers.

We highly recommend this upgrade for users of Magento 1.4.x as the new platform fixes numerous security and performance issues since 1.4 was released over a year ago. Be sure to make the upgrade and thoroughly test in a development environment before moving to your production version!

Interested in upgrading to 1.6? Drop us a line and we’ll be glad to provide a quote.

Spammers and malicious software coders have taken full advantage of many older WordPress versions. The popularity of the CMS has made it a prime target for a variety of exploits, creating a never-ending battle between the development community and those looking to crack it.

Upgrading your content management software to its most recent version is extremely important for website and server security. Although it’s sometimes a tedious, frustrating process, the protection against malicious attacks and spam that software and plugin updates provide should not be overlooked. WordPress and other CMS platforms have made it easy to update plugins and core functionality through the administrative interface; the issues normally arise with plugin and theme incompatibility rather than the update process itself.

Through this notification service, Google provides site owners with useful information that should be heeded immediately to prevent the headaches from being spammed. It’s also a win-win for Google since this effort improves search engine page results by helping site owners “clean up” their compromised WordPress sites.

If you’re a WordPress site administrator, head over to the WordPress codex to learn more about updating your site immediately.

As developers and users of Magento since 2008, we have invested heavily in the platform, its community, and in our own skills and abilities. Although we support other e-commerce solutions besides Magento, we rarely suggest them for new projects and mainly provide support services for these platforms. Magento has been, and will hopefully continue to be, our bread and butter e-commerce solution.

With this in mind, we don’t see eBay’s acquisition of Magento as an threat to our businesses and those of our clients. Instead, we see an opportunity for eBay to provide its technical and operational expertise in the form of strategic guidance for the Magento platform and its community. We see the acquisition as a way for eBay to learn from Magento, and vice versa. Reading Magento’s official FAQ PDF made us feel a little better.

The game-changer, however, is eBay’s formation of a new e-commerce platform called X.Commerce that aims to integrate Magento’s technology. Again, we don’t see this as a threat to Magento as an independent platform, but we do believe that a slow transition will begin to migrate Magento users and developers over to X.Commerce. This brings a host of challenges for eBay’s X.Commerce group as well as for the Magento community. Check out the video below for what eBay’s CEO has to say about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And Magento isn’t the only platform scheduled to be play a part of X.Commerce: check out the details on eBay acquiring GSI Commerce.

eBay is definitely stirring up the e-commerce industry with these bold moves, and we’re going along for the ride.

For the time being, we’re just wondering what else Christopher Payne (VP and Head of eBay North America) will divulge during his keynote presentation at the IRCE 2011. We’ll be there to get the latest, straight from the source.

One of our favorite times of the year is coming up – the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition! With over 7,000 attendees, nearly 175 speakers, and 500 exhibitors, we’re extremely anxious to see what’s new this year.

We’ll be attending the conference from June 14th to the 17th down in the San Diego Convention Center. Communications with project managers will be not be affected.

Shoot us a message if you’re planning to attend as well! We hope to see you there.

The most exciting improvements include support for media storage on CDNs/databases,  improved order status management, built-in gift message field during checkout, improved import/export functionality, support for a new payment methods, and Magento Mobile v20. Over one hundred bugs were also fixed since 1.4.2.

Head over to the release notes page to see more details, or the download page to get the latest version. You can also upgrade via the MagentoConnect Manager by logging into the administration area.

We highly recommend that Core updates such as this one are done by a qualified Magento developer. Extension and theme conflicts are commonplace if Core upgrading best practices are overlooked. Let us help you upgrade Magento! Give us a call or fill out an RFP today.

Drupal is a free, community-built framework for easily building and managing websites. Users of all levels are able to fully utilize the simple administration area to create content, change features and settings, and much more. The true power of the framework is its ability to be easily adapted to varying levels of complexity — as your website grows, Drupal is at your side with customizable and scalable plugins and features.

New features in Drupal 7 include:

• Revamped administrative interface
• Out-of-the box image handling
• CDN integration
• Built-in custom data fields for content
• Advanced scaling options for managing traffic spikes
• Easy, no-FTP theme and module updates

There are many more features and improvements to be explored, so take Drupal 7 out for a test drive or read more about what the community has in store for next week.

Although we’ve seen first-hand the impact of Magento’s success on e-commerce, it’s great to see the company decorate its most impressive feats in the press release. We’ve outlined some key statistics that make us the extra proud to be Magento developers.

• According to Google Trends, the term “Magento” is now Googled more than the word “eCommerce.”
• Since then the platform been downloaded more than 2.5 million times and powers in excess of $25 billion in annual sales from more than 80,000 merchants worldwide.
• The Magento Connect marketplace, powered by Magento’s innovative community, now boasts more than 3,000 extensions and applications built by third-party developers as add-ons to the Magento eCommerce platform. New extensions create greater flexibility and innovation for merchants and are being developed at a rate of 100 to 150 per month.
• Magento’s worldwide solutions partners are showing similar growth rates and success driven by the tremendous demand of merchants seeking Magento customization and integration for their eCommerce platform.

We’re pleased to be Magento users and developers, and extremely proud that we’ve been able to share in their successes. The company has come a long way in the past few years, and we hope they continue onward and upward!

Although U.S. online retail sales slowed in 2008-09, forecasts by eMarketer are estimating a much healthier business environment in the next few years.

eMarketer’s March 2010 report estimates that 2010 U.S. e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will be close to $152 billion. Including travel sales, this figured increases by $92.5 billion, for a total of a whopping $244.5 billion.

This is exciting news for companies looking grow into the online channel. Not only are barriers of entry being reduced, but consumers are continually showing their confidence and trust in purchasing online. And as newer generations of consumers replace their older counterparts, the rates of social, mobile, and common online retail sales will only continue to increase.

For more information on the market research, consider purchasing eMarketer’s 14 page report.

…DrupalCamp LA is the most anticipated independent Drupal event on the West Coast. With so much taking place in the Drupal-sphere, it can be difficult keeping up with the latest and greatest around you and that is why this camp exists: To share, learn, and network about Drupal.

DrupalCamp comes to the Southern California on the weekend of August 7th and 8th, 2010. The fourth annual camp is held in a BarCamp-style format, where active participation and maintaining a relaxed, friendly environment are encouraged.

Over 60 sessions for all types of users and prospective users will be available for attendance — all for free! Sessions are run by Drupal volunteers, and will be recorded for those who are unable to attend.

For more information about the event, visit the official DrupalCamp LA or LA Drupal group website.

Join us at DrupalCamp 2010! Forte Web Group managers will be in attendance to review important topics facing the development of Drupal 7 and new regulations regarding PCI Compliance. Let us know if you’ll be there!

See the full release notes for more information on the fixes and changes in version 1.4.1.1. or head over to the download page to update.