Powerbanners – Responsive banner slider magento extension documentation

Features

Powerbanners – push your customers purchase MORE. Creating and displaying banners with Powerbanners is easier than ever. This module allows you to create responsive banner slider to showcase your brands, products or seasonal offers in almost any place on site. Powerbanners is a perfect solution for those who want their visitors to be aware of all hot stuffs.

It does support touch devices like iPhone and iPad, customer can swipe thru the banners. Support multiple screen resolutions and adapts accordinly. Support retina screens.

Comes with slider widget. Select one of your banner sliders, adjust its settings like navigation or slide speed and insert shortcode in your cms page or block.

Check out Powerbanners FAQ for tutorials and features overview

Full features list

  • Add as many sliders as you need
  • Responsive layout, adapts to phone, tablet etc
  • Touch devices support, swipe to scroll
  • Support retina screens
  • Slider widget
  • Multiple sliders on the same page
  • Create your own text styles
  • Control banner size
  • Organize banners through order
  • Over 600 Google fonts
  • Compatible with all the modern browsers
  • Multi-store supported
  • No programming skills required
  • Easy to install and configure
  • Meets Magento programming practices

Quick Start

  • Install Powerbanners extension
  • Configure extension settings
  • Create your own text styles or use default
  • Create new banner slider

    You need to create at least one banner slider to start add new banners

  • Add new banners to the slider
  • Navigate to cms page or static block edit page and insert shortcode or widget.

    To insert Powerbanners Slider Widget in CMS editor click “”Insert Widget”” icon or button. Select NWDthemes Powerbanners widget. In Widget Options select slider you want to insert and click Insert Widget button.

    To create Powerbanners Slider Widget Instance go to CMS > Widget section page and push Add New Widget Instance button. Select NWDthemes Powerbanners widget type, choose design package/theme and click Continue. Fill Frontend Properties form giving widget instance name, assign store views and sort order. Click Add Layout Update button and select pages and block you want to display widget on. Switch to Widget Options tab and select slider for this widget instance. Click Save to update widget options.

    For the XML layout use:

    
        my_alias
    

    For the PHP code use:

    getLayout()->createBlock('powerbanners/slider')->setAlias('my_alias')->toHtml(); ?>

    Please note that my_alias is used for reference. You should change it to your slider alias.

  • Check result on store frontend

Package

Extension package contain following files and folders

  • Documentation – documentation in html format
  • Extension – extension source code

Installation

We do recommend to install and test the extension on development server before installing it on live store

Before start

Backup

Backup store files and the store database.

  • Disable compilation mode in System > Tools > Compilation.
  • disable Magento cache – Cache Management
  • Log out from magento admin panel ( if you logged in ). This step is required to reset magento access control
    cache

Install

  • Unzip extension package
  • Navigation into package/Extension folder
  • Upload content of package/Extension to your magento root directory.
    • package/Extension/app >> magento_root/app
    • package/Extension/js >> magento_root/js
    • package/Extension/skin >> magento_root/skin
    • and so on

    Powerbanners does not overwrite any magento core files

  • Set correct file permissions for all the theme files which you uploaded to your server.
  • Enable & configure the extension – Powerbanners configuration

Common Issues

  • No “NWDthemes” item in main menu.

    • check that all files were uploaded.
    • check that all files have correct permissions.
    • check that Magento cache is disabled – Cache Management.

  • I get 404 error in System > Configuration > FAQ Page

    • Logout from backend and login back

  • My configuration changes do not appear on the store.

    • refresh Magento cache – Cache Management
    • make sure that settings are not overrided on different scope level like website or store view. Scope switch is located in top left corner of Configuration page. More info about scopes – Understanding store scopes

Uninstallation

If you require to disable the extension without removing it completely, go
to System > Configuration > Advanced > Advanced > Disable Modules
Output
and disable the module Nwdthemes_Powerbanners

If you want to completely remove extension, follow these steps:

  • Disable compilation, in case it is enabled. ( System > Tools > Compilation )
  • Login to your FTP, navigate to app/etc/modules/
  • Open the file Nwdthemes_Powerbanners.xml and change the following line:
    from

    true

    to

    false
  • Clear the cache under var/cache
  • Make sure that the site is working properly
  • If everything works fine, it is safe to delete the files of the extension.

Configuration

Navigate to System > Configuration > Nwdthemes extensions > Powerbanners configuration to modify extension configuration

  • General

    • Status – Enable / disable all powerbanners instances
    • Custom CSS – Add custom css

Text styles

You can create your own text styles for banners. Choose from over 600 google fonts, update font weight, font size and letter spacing.
You will see live preview of chosen parameters

powerbanners text styles

Text style has following parameters

  • Style Title – style title
  • Font Family – adjust font family
  • Font Size – adjust font size
  • Font Weight – adjust font weight
  • Letter spacing – adjust font letter spacing
  • Text Color – style Text Color
  • Background Color – style Background Color
  • Enabled – style status – Enabled / disabled
  • Sort Order – style sort order

Banners

Create / edit your banners. Upload images, assign text styles, add link and choose if you want to open it new or same window. Retina screens also supported.

powerbanners banners grid

Banner has following parameters

  • Slider – assign banner to a slider
  • Store View – select banner store view
  • Banner Link – Banner Link
  • Link Target – open banner link in same or new window
  • Image – banner image
  • Image for Retina – banner image for retina screens
  • Text location – choose text location
  • Text Line 1 – Banner Text Line 1
  • Text Line 1 Style – Banner Text Line 1 Style
  • Text Line 2 – Banner Text Line 2
  • Text Line 2 Style – Banner Text Line 2 Style
  • Enabled – Enable / disable banner
  • Sort Order – banner sort order

Shortcode

You can insert Powerbanners slider in any cms page or static block

{{block type="powerbanners/slider" alias="slider_alias" }}

This code insert new Powerbanners slider in cms block. Slider will use settings from slider configuration. However, you can override certain settings in shortcode parameters.

Possible parameters:

  • show_title – show / hide slider block title

    Possible values:

    • 1
    • 0
  • autoscroll – Change to any integer ( for example 5000 to play every 5 seconds).
    Set to 0 to disable autoscroll
  • scroll_items – Slide per item or per page

    Possible values:

    • item
    • page
  • rewind – Slide to first item or stop at last item

    Possible values:

    • 1
    • 0
  • slide_speed – Slide speed in milliseconds
  • stop_on_hover – Stop autoplay on mouse hover

    Possible values:

    • 1
    • 0
  • navigation – Display “next” and “prev” buttons.

    Possible values:

    • 1
    • 0
  • navigation_mode – Show navigation arrows permanently or on hover.

    Possible values:

    • always
    • hover

Widget

powerbanners widget

To insert Powerbanners Slider Widget in CMS editor click “”Insert Widget”” icon or button. Select NWDthemes Powerbanners widget. In Widget Options select slider you want to insert and click Insert Widget button.

To create Powerbanners Slider Widget Instance go to CMS > Widget section page and push Add New Widget Instance button. Select NWDthemes Powerbanners widget type, choose design package/theme and click Continue. Fill Frontend Properties form giving widget instance name, assign store views and sort order. Click Add Layout Update button and select pages and block you want to display widget on. Switch to Widget Options tab and select slider for this widget instance. Click Save to update widget options.

Widget has same parameters as described in Shortcode

Magento Configuration

We do not provide support of magento core features. More inormation about Magento can be found in Useful links

Cache Management

Cache Management

When making certain changes to Magento, such as modifying code files, it is necessary to clear the cache in order for the changes to become visible.

There are two ways to clear the cache in Magento:

Through the Magento Admin Panel

  1. Log in to your Admin Panel account
  2. Go to the System -> Cache Management section
  3. Click on the Flush Magento Cache button

Using SSH/FTP or the cPanel File Manager
Delete the contents of the var/cache/ folder using the following SSH command (MUST be executed from your Magento base directory):
rm -rf var/cache/*
OR
Delete the folder var/cache/ through your FTP client or using the cPanel File Manager.

Index Management

Index Management

  1. Log in to Magento administrator control panel.
  2. Go To System > Index Management.
  3. On the left side is a list of categories that can be reindexed. Select the categories to reindex. If you want to run a reindex for all of the products, click “Select All”.
  4. From the Actions drop-down menu, select Reindex Data and then click Submit.
  5. Depending on how many categories, and the amount of information that needs to be reindexed, this could take a few minutes, or hours.

Help & Support

Support Policy

Support hours: 10AM – 6PM GMT+1 time, Monday – Friday. The support response time is 24-48 hours.

Support for our items includes:

  • Fixing bugs and reported issues
  • Responding to problems regarding the item and its features
  • Providing updates to ensure compatibility with new software versions

Item support does not include:

  • Customization and installation services
  • Support for third party software and plug-ins
  • Support for Magento: configuration, installation, maintenance etc.