Blog
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DDoS Protection
DDoS protection at the server, not just at the edge Most Magento sites end up behind Cloudflare. It’s the path of least resistance — set up the DNS, enable proxying, switch on the WAF, done. For a lot of sites it’s enough. But edge protection comes with its own costs: a network hop on every […]
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Application Aware Hosting
“Managed Hosting” Doesn’t Mean What It Used To For eCommerce stores running on Magento, Adobe Commerce, or mission critical custom apps on Shopify Plus — the definition needs to change. A few years ago, “managed hosting” was a meaningful upgrade. It meant someone else handled the server: patching the OS, monitoring disk space, restarting services […]
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Why we don’t use cloudflare
The biggest myth in the Magento Agency world is to pass traffic through cloudflare. Don’t get me wrong – I am not a cloudflare critic. Indeed, we have customers on their business and enterprise accounts that we recommended. The issue is that cloudflare is not a magic wand many agencies make to believe it is. […]
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Amazon RDS v/s Amazon EC2
When hosting Magento on AWS, RDS is often assumed to be the default database. At luroConnect we do not use RDS and have saved thousands of $ for many of our customers, each month. We wrote up a RDS vs EC2 focussed on Magento – born out of migrating a customer from RDS to EC2. […]
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Magento Upgrade
Worried about Magento major version upgrade risk and downtime? Customers have some basic requirement During go live have a very short downtime. Give me a way to rollback when there is a problem in the upgrade Here is a blueprint that we follow. Create a parallel environment for new staging and new prod Make sure […]
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Magento merchants – let us declare freedom from codefreeze. Deploy-at-will.
This holiday season, Magento merchants – let us declare freedom from codefreeze. Deploy-at-will. It is 2025 and this is not an unreasonable expectation. No more code freeze before the holiday season. Heck, changes are needed right during a sale. A UI update, a new marketing plugin integration. Before you get that freedom, you need to […]
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Partnering with luroConnect has its benefits.
At luroConnect, we’re more than just a managed hosting provider — we’re your growth partner. Our goal is to create a collaborative ecosystem where agencies, consultants, and digital solution providers can thrive alongside us. Whether you build eCommerce stores, offer digital strategy, or manage client infrastructure, our partner program is built to support your growth […]
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Content Security Policy in Magento : inline scripts and nonce
Introduction to Content Security Policy Content Security Policy (CSP) is a HTTP header that promises to enhance security and prevent cartjack type of attacks or atleast make them difficult. A popular attack vector is for malicious javascript code to be added to your webpage to skim credit card or other user data as a visitor […]
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php opcache explained
What is php op-cache? Php is an interpretive language. The interpreter has to read each line of php code, parse and tokenize it – i.e. convert to internal format also called opcode or operation codes. It can then interpret by “running” the opcodes. With php 8, the JIT changes it a bit. A php project […]
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Magento and WordPress site performance can improve with proxysql
proxysql is a small infrastructure change that can bring about a huge performance difference in large traffic Magento and WordPress websites. What is proxysql? Proxysql is a high performance mysql proxy. As a proxy it sits between the application and mysql. mysql requests from the application are routed to the proxy, which in turn routes the […]
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luroConnect Image Optimization Support : Watchimage
Image Optimization is a basic requirement to have a faster website. Photo images used in websites are generated with too large a size to be served over the internet on a web page. Also browser support for different, more modern and efficient (by storage) formats vary, requiring an image optimizer to be used on a […]
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luroConnect Magento CI/CD adds meta information to builds
luroConnect CI/CD luroConnect managed hosting platform includes CI/CD from any git source. luroConnect CI/CD is an opinionated, platform specific CI/CD. It currently supports Magento (luma, Hyva, ScandiPWA themes), PWAStudio, Angular, nodejs applications. Nodejs builds include yarn and npm based installation. Builds are done in docker with environment variables. (Note : Our Magento CI/CD also builds […]
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Improving Headless load times – Server Side Rendering Update
PWA / Headless with Magento. PWA and Headless started with a lot of hype and promises. Many websites have benefited from successful implementations that proves many promises were fulfilled. However, one of the biggest drawbacks of a headless / PWA implementation of a Magento website is the page load times – especially as reported by […]
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Using AWS Autoscale “warm pools” to reduce costs
AWS Autoscale added a new feature “Warm Pool”. Let us explore this feature and see how luroConnect uses this to reduce hosting costs. The autoscale latency problem Usually, AWS Autoscale will launch a new server with the given AMI image based on the launch configuration or launch template configured. Launching a new server takes about […]
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Do you know what size server you want for your eCommerce site?
Leaving the toughest question unanswered When signing up for your Magento hosting, the first question you see asked, before you place an order, is what size server you want. It has become so ubiquitous, that everyone just expects to answer it looking at the cost. But this is much like Mathematics books leaving tough problems […]
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luroConnect supports Hyva in its CI/CD pipeline
luroConnect CI/CD is an inbuilt feature of the luroConnect Managed Hosting Platform. Built from the ground up, it supports Magento and Mage-OS and dependent build options such as Magepack, baler and headless/PWA stacks such as ScanePWA, PWA Studio, vue-storefront. luroConnect announces support for Hyva. To be configured as a build option, your Hyva website builds and […]
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Improving PDAStudio performance : Cache more
PWAStudio makes many “storeConfig” calls that – depending on the website – be made cacheable in varnish as they are unlikely to change. This will reduce cookie blocking – or reduce load on php if the authorization is used. What is the session blocking problem? When Magento (php) processes a request, the cookie passed is […]
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Meet Magento India 2023 – Speaker Talk – Improve PWA Performance
On Feb 3, 2023, our CEO Pradip Shah presented a talk titled “Improving Headless / PWA Performance” at Meet Magento India in Mumbai, India. The premise of the talk was the observation that the Headless / PWA eCommerce world promised lightning fast websites but many have ended up with slow performance, especially as measured by […]
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Improve page speed with Hyvä Themes
Modern Page Speed Metrics Modern Page Speed Metrics as defined by Google are called “Core Web Vitals“. This measure focusses on 3 aspects of user experience. Largest Contentful Paint or LCP that measures loading performance. Content Layout Shift or CLS that measures visual stability. First Input Delay or FID that measures interactivity. This obsoletes previous […]
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Should I move to shopify from Magento?
The platform battle of Magento vs Shopify rages on. Increasingly merchants are moving to Shopify from Magento due to easy of operations and website management. For many, where the decision was a no-brainer, the move has already been done. For others, this question rages on, as shopfiy adds more features from itself and its partners […]
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Magento and graphql : A slowdown saga
PWA, Magento and graphql : A slowdown saga Note : I write this article as Magento 2.4.5 is released and fixes some major performance issues that have resulted in the dream of headless and PWA go sour for many early adopters of technologies like PWA Studio and Vue Storefront 2. PWAs and headless came with […]
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Core Web Vitals : Content Layout Shift (CLS)
Introduction Core Web Vitals contain 3 factors to consider for the speed of your website – LCP or Largest Contentful Paint, FID or First Input Delay and CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift. This article explores CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift. CLS measures visual stability of your web page on a given device. What is CLS? A […]
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What should (and should not be) in a robots.txt file?
What is robots.txt? robots.txt is a file, accesible as a URL https://<domain>/robots.txt that tells crawlers and BOTs what URLS crawlers can access on the domain / website. However, there is a lot of confusion among internet marketers on its value and power. The format of the file is very simple. Instructions to allow or disallow […]
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Varnish, Magento and frequent product updates
In response to Erwin Hofman’s M2 performance post, a reader commented Varnish and Magento 2 Use of varnish with Magento has been a popular speed increase. So popular, that Magento decided to incorporate in M2. This has spread endless debates though Would it not have been better to improve the core code quality instead? How […]
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Case Study : How a simple code change had a major impact on website performance
During black Friday sale, one of our customers’ websites was too slow and unusable for long periods. We were embarrassed, but all our analysis pointed to code. As part of our active support, we help with identifying code bottlenecks. We use many techniques including profiling, but a simple technique for a really slow website is […]
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Sansec reports new Magento 1 hack
Over the weekend of Sept 11, 2020, Sansec reported a web skimming attack on Magento 1 stores. It was the largest single day automated attach recorded by Sansec. What are skimming attacks? “Skimming” attacks are malicious code added to your website so when a site visitor is entering any personal information including credit card, the […]
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Supercharge your Magento with a Varnish cluster
What is a varnish cluster? A varnish cluster is a set of varnish nodes, each in a different geographical location, in front of the same Magento backend. As shown a Magento hosted in the US East region can serve varnish nodes from across the world. Access to the website from each region is directed towards […]
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Choosing Hosting platform for Magento : Digital Ocean
One in a while you may want to check on the technology and options available for Magento hosting – technologies change, hosting costs reduce, life becomes easier for you and the merchant. In this multi-part series we will explore cloud platforms and their suitability to hosting a production Magento website. In this article we will explore […]
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Interview with Carmen Bremen, Mage-One
Carmen Bremen is an accomplished Magento developer and community member for many years. She is a certified developer and she has been awarded Magento Master She is one of the founding members of Mage-One – a paid long-term-support (LTS) for Magento 1. We chatted with her over email recently. luroConnect : Tell us about yourself (how […]
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How Magento can get near 0 downtime deployment
Factor III of the 12 Factor App says “Store config in the environment”. 12 Factor App is what devops lives by – a set of 12 principles written by Adam Wiggins for predictable web app deployments. Storing configuration in environment, separate from code has the advantages of reliable deployment along with reduced time to deploy. […]
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12 factor app and Magento
Adam Wiggins’ 12 factor app (https://12factor.net) is a highly respected standard for web apps. While written with SaaS applications in mind, let us explore and see how Magento and the ecosystem stands up to these factors. 1. Codebase. One codebase tracked in revision control, many deploys. Magento is in git and hence a typical Magento […]
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How we hosted a big sale on Magento without a hitch
During an online sale that includes promotion to a list, brands worry about downtime due to “unexpected high load”. We believe that while every system has a rated limit, there can be flexibility added to your infrastructure. With some planning, including autoscale and tuning, a successful sale event can be a very likely outcome. See […]
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Magento emails & SMTP
Emails are a very critical portion of an eCommerce website. There are 2 types of emails that are used – transactional and promotional. Transactional emails are emails the eCommerce system sends for regular customer activity – such as order confirmation email. It may also include abandoned cart email, wish list reminders, password change, etc. If […]
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Magento 1 end of life
June 2020 is a few weeks away and many stores are not ready to move away from Magento 1. But wait, you don’t have to update – now or in the long run. COVID-19 Update : We find many customers have had to delay their Magento 2 launch in these uncertain times. We also know […]
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Meet Magento India 2020 – panel discussion
I was on a panel at Meet Magento India 2020 #MM20IN moderated by Brent Peterson of Wagento. It was an honor to be part of a elite panel – Miguel Ignacio Balparda of Nexess / Liquid Web, Shehzad Karkhanawala of Webscale Networks, Arun of ServerGuy. The discussion was lively and well received. While the time was too […]
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Meet Magento India 2020
luroConnect is a bronze sponsor at Meet Magento India 2020 Look out for our invitations and announcements closer to the date of the event. In the meanwhile, you can setup a time for a demo.
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Free as in freedom, not free beer!
Introduction The open source community has had this saying for long, though there are many, including myself, who do not understand what this difference means. With recent changes to open source license agreements, this difference has come to the fore. For example, changes in the open source licensing of redis and mongodb has restricted how […]
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Deploying a Magento PWA project
Why PWA might be the future of headless eCommerce Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are designed to address the mobile revenue gap indicated below. In most markets, online retail has a higher proportional audience reach among mobile users than desktop. However, mobile sales numbers are much lower. There can be many reasons for this, some in […]
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PWA in Magento – how do your images look?
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in Magento opens a new opportunity to improve image quality on eCommerce websites. Use of good quality images has been known for a long time to be the a key factor in digital experience and hence conversions. In recent years many factors have changed that requires a relook at how images […]
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404 when moving to Magento 2
When migrating platforms for example from WooCommerce to Magento or from Magento 1 to Magento 2, it is imperative that we move all URLs to ensure proper SEO authority is retained after the move as well as real users get a smooth Customer Experience (CX). If it is not possible to maintain the same URLs, […]
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Book Review : The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton
Book Review : The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy Author : Richard Shotton Review of podcast interview on Everyone Hates Marketers podcast Building a brand is tough – what’s worse is that destroying a brand is easy. Standing on the top of the roof and shouting (ok, nationwide TV ads […]
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Progressive Web Apps in Magento 2 – First Opinion
Magento released 2.3 and that included PWA Studio to help build progressive web apps. Progressive Web Apps is a technology that allows a website to act like an app on a mobile device – in that it does not need continuous connectivity to the internet. This gives the benefit of easy and quick navigation. When […]
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Analysis of recent website security breaches
Introduction Recent high profile website security breaches are nice to study to ensure you have defense mechanisms in place. We strongly believe in “defense in depth” or “multi layered security”. This includes Defense in Multiple Places. Meaning that an organization need to deploy security mechanisms in different places. Layered Defenses. This means to have many […]
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The DIY Guide to Magento Hosting
Introduction Quite often we depend on the hosting provider to give us a fast website. But with the availability of affordable hosting options in terms of VPC that requires some DIY skills to setup. In this DIY guide we help you setup a high performance Magento hosting environment. This guide includes configurations and tips. As […]
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Enterprise grade security for your Magento website
At a time when data theft and leaks are more real than ever, don’t be the next one to explain the reason for a security breach. With threats growing in number, type and modality of attack every day, multiple layers of security are needed, so if one layer were to be breached, another would yet […]
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6 tips to speedup Magento websites
Introduction Website speed is very crucial to conversions. There are many studies that indicate how website slowdown of even one second can cause drop in conversions. And websites that have taken this learning have seen conversions grow. Take Pier 1 for example in this article. Our tips are oriented towards what you need to do […]
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Case Study : How bad code can hurt performance and even break
Many websites, notably eCommerce and WordPress, live with bad code. They end up spending more effort in improving performance by adding more resources. It is like adding more horsepower to an inefficient car engine – will consume more gas and in the long run fixing the engine would be a better thing. Not all such […]
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A non technical guide to scaling Magento (or any other website)
Performance & Scaling of a Magento web site are often confused. As a store owner who may not be technical a close analogy with real life will help in talking to your hosting providers and other experts. It is no coincidence that hits to a website is called as traffic. We take this analogy further, […]
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Magento Caches – Scaling Magento Part 2
Introduction Caches are an integral part of a strategy for performance and scaling a Magento website. Managing caches is a core function of infrastructure management. A Cache is the term used to describe a mechanism to store calculated values such as a query or HTML so a subsequent request does not need to recalculate. While […]
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Scaling Magento Series
Performance & Scaling of a Magento web site are often confused. As a store owner who may not be technical a close analogy with real life will help in talking to your hosting providers and other experts. It is no coincidence that hits to a website is called as traffic! Performance of a website is […]
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Full Page Cache (FPC): Scaling Magento Part 1
Introduction The most important and often ignored factor to scaling is the quality of code. Well written code will scale better. The next most important factor is perhaps caching. There are many types of caches that developers, managers and store owners need to understand. Full Page Cache (FPC) is seen by store owners as a […]
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Securing your Magento site
Executive Summary Owning a Magento website means you have a resource you own and control on the internet. Keeping it secure in all aspects is a responsibility. You need to ensure your business data is secure. your customer data and privacy is secured. your customer’s computers are protected when accessing your website. Your privacy policy […]
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Transactional Email Deliverability of your Magento Store
The internet started with email and email continues to be a very important means of communication for a Magento site. Emails that are sent directly in relation to an activity on the website such as a registration or purchase – are called transactional emails. Transactional emails occupy a different place in the email marketing category […]
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5 Questions to ask before selecting a Magento Managed Hosting Provider
5 Questions to ask your Magento Managed Service Provider Does the managed provider help you with setup of a CDN? Content Delivery Networks or CDN is the best way to get a boost of your page load time. A CDN takes away the load on your server by caching commonly used files that do not […]
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Think before you execute
How system admins can use planning and checklists to improve quality Introduction Sounds like a right statement to make an obvious but in this article I will look at how it applies practically to a system admin It starts at the beginning When a task (in the form of a incident request or a service […]
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Minify css and js for Magento as a build process
How to improve page load speed without server overhead so you can serve more pages. Need for a build? Magento being written in php, an interpretive language, the need to build is not essential for deployment. Moreover, since many small store owners are not technical or do not have a full time technical team, solutions […]
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How to evaluate a hosting service for Magento?
Introduction With so many choices in hosting service it is difficult to decide what to use for hosting of a production Magento server. The first question most commonly asked is – should one use a physical (or bare metal) server or a virtual machine (or cloud server)? Many people think the obvious answer is Virtual […]
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Nginx as a load balancer for Magento
Introduction During seasonal peaks or as traffic grows, there will be a need to add multiple app servers to your Magento store. A load balancer for Magento becomes essential. We have found that using nginx as a load balancer gives acceptable performance. We have not found many instances where we would recommend a hardware load […]
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Nginx or Apache : Best server for Magento
Introduction Apache server has been for years been the default http server linux hosts use. However, recently there have been many newer “lighter” http servers. This blog article focuses on Magento hosting. Magento is a php based web eCommerce framework. Nginx requires php-fpm to process php requests. So, this comparison is really apache vs nginx […]
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Secure access to a Magento server
Today the biggest threat to your Magento production server are external threats – of being hacked. While you may not be a high value target, hackers run crawlers on the internet to discover servers with weak security and attack. In this article we discuss secure access to a Magento server. An OS level attack if […]
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Will HTTP/2 help my Magento Store?
Introduction HTTP/2 is the new http standard. Most browsers, including Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer 11, Safari, Amazon Silk and Microsoft Edge support HTTP/2. Nginx and other web servers too support HTTP/2. Magento 1.x and Magento 2 work very well with HTTP/2. In this article we see the benefit of HTTP/2 and give some configuration […]