Some of you may encountered this problem. You install new Magento extension through downloader, try to access its configuration settings and Magento throws “Access denied” page at you. Although you’re administrator of the system.
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23+ Ways to Promote Your Website for Free
There is actually no such thing as free website promotion unless you are really lucky. You always have to invest at least some time and effort, and as we all know time equals money which means no promotion is actually free.
However, if you are looking into ways to promote your website online while not spending any money, here are some ways you can do it. Most of these are generally well known but you might find something new and useful.
Read moreAdding a new language in Magento
As anything in Magento adding a new language is something that requires a certain procedure which we will explain right now and for future reference.
Read moreOnline and real time text editing that works!
What is etherpad? It’s an real-time collaborative text editing online application.
As they state on their site “Etherpad” is a “Really real-time collaboration”. That means no delay between writing or editing your shared document. It has built in versioning, chat and requires no registration for anyone in the free version.
Read moreZend Core – PHP LAMP/WAMP stack overview
For all those in open source web application development, like myself, LAMP/WAMP is well known term, especially if your development is based on PHP. Imagine WAMP with commercial support available and you what to you get? You get Zend Core. I don’t mean to be harsh neither to WAMP or Zend Core with statements like these. I’m simply trying to explain as short as possible, to those interested in Zend Core what it actually is.
Read moreZend authentication component (Zend_Auth), database storage class
I love Zend Framework. Sometimes it can really be overhead but most of the time it’s really nice working in well organized, documented framework. One of the components I use relatively often iz Zend_Auth component. Zend Framework documentation is quite rich so I wont get into explaining how to use Zend_Auth. There is one thing that bothered me in Zend_Auth, and that’s persistent storage. Zend_Auth (in the latest version 1.7.6, as of time of this writing) supports only Session state as it’s storage. What I needed is full database session storage.
Read moreAdd breadcrumbs in Magento to pages that miss them
Here is one solution on how to add breadcrumbs to pages in Magento that by default do not have breadcrumbs. Recently we had a client that requested a basic breadcrumb to be shown on pages that Magento does not serve breadcrumbs.
<?php
/**
*
* CUSTOM BREADCRUMBS
*
* Adds url breadcrumbs for pages that do not have breadcrumbs by default
*
*/
?>
<?php if(is_null($crumbs)): ?>
<?php
/**
* NOTE
* On some servers use ->getServer('PATH_INFO')
* and on some ->getServer('ORIG_PATH_INFO')
*/
$urlRequest = Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest();
$urlPart = $urlRequest->getServer('ORIG_PATH_INFO');
if(is_null($urlPart))
{
$urlPart = $urlRequest->getServer('PATH_INFO');
}
$urlPart = substr($urlPart, 1 );
$currentUrl = $this->getUrl($urlPart);
//$controllerName = Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getRequest()->getControllerName();
//$controllerName = ucfirst($controllerName);
$controllerName = str_replace("/", " ", $urlPart);
$controllerName = str_replace("_", " ", $controllerName);
$controllerName = str_replace("-", " ", $controllerName);
$controllerName = ucfirst($controllerName);
?>
<span class="breadcrumbs">
<strong class="float"><?php echo $this->__("You're currently on: ") ?></strong>
<ul class="breadcrumbs">
<li class="home">
<a title="<?php echo $this->__('Go to Home Page') ?>" href="<?php echo $this->getUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->__('Home') ?></a>
</li>
<li> / </li>
<li class="<?php echo strtolower($controllerName) ?>">
<strong><?php echo $this->__($controllerName) ?></strong>
</li>
</ul>
</span>
<?php endif; /* END OF CUSTOM BREADCRUMBS */ ?>
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Custom checkout cart – How to send email after successful checkout
Recently I have been working on a custom checkout page for one of our clients in Sweden. I had some trouble figuring out how to send default Magento order email with all of the order info. After an hour or so of studying Magento core code, here is the solution on how to send email after successful order has been made.
Read moreSelling on eBay vs. running a web store
People tend to ask this question a lot. Should I sell on eBay or should I open my own web store. There is no ultimate answer to this question and it really depends on many different factors such as your budget, your niche, the amount of time you have, number of different products and so on.
This is the list of things that might help you make up your mind on what’s the best way to go for you.
Read moreFile upload in Magento
Whan of the most enticipated and needed things in Magento is File upload Custom Option. As discussed last year at Magento Forum, it is not completed nor tested.
Now, Magento already have frontend and admin part of file upload option implemented in themes. Since backend part is still missing, understand that this still doesn’t work, however, if you’re interested how it looks, read on ..
Read moreSimple product with custom options in grouped product in Magento
Does the title sound complicated? Grouped Products display several products on one page. For example – if you’re selling chef’s knives and you have the same knife in four sizes, you can make a grouped product to display all four sizes. Customers can select the size(s) they want and add to cart from this page. Another example would be a themed bedroom set – you can create a grouped product and sell the sheets, comforter, and pillow cases all from the same page.
Read moreGetting started with REST using Zend Framework
I was playing with SOAP for the last few days. I must say, it looks somewhat complicated in some areas. After some google-ing on SOAP vs REST stuff I decided to write this simple ZendFramework REST how to. Actualy this is a PHP part of tutorial since I was working on a PHP and C# solution using Mono framework for C# part can be found on my site. My desire was to create a web service in PHP environment and consume that service in C# environment.Getting started with REST using ZendFramework. Here’s the PHP REST server part.
Basic example is really, really simple. Aren’t they always. Seriously, it’s not my intention to go into outermost details.
Read moreWhat is the best shopping cart?
If you try to ask this question on some forum or newsgroup, you will surely get many replies. Everyone will present you his favorite. My first developed online store was created with standard osCommerce platform. After three or four projects, I started to work with CRE Loaded and used it frequently for years. Although it was also an osCommerce fork, it had many advantages. I switched to Magento™ early this year and this is my final choice.
Let’s look at the popularity of those platforms now.
Read moredotProject – Open Source Project Management for free
Notice the word free in the title. If something is declared as open source this does not imply it should be free. Take a look at FogBugz. It is, one of the best open source project tracking tools currently available. However it’s quite expensive. Maybe not so expensive to larger companies but for small businesses and freelancers it sure is.
Yesterday I came across dotProject tool. If you are like me and came to PHP from .Net world then your first though might be that this is .Net application due to the “dot” in the title. Well, it isn’t, it’s a PHP powered collaboration tool.
Read moreCustom price filter in Magento
Quite a few people have asked me for a price filter functionality that comes with Magento. Mostly, the questions are same: How does one put the price filter anywhere on the page? How does one set it’s on price ranges in that filter? What defines default price ranges. Is it possible to set price filter for all my products instead of just single category? Lot of questions. The answer might be simpler then you might think.
There are two ways to approach this problem. Head trough wall or stop and think approach.
Read moreHow to track internal site search with Google Analytics?
Did you know that you can actually track what your visitors are searching for inside your website? We are going to explain you how it’s done via Google’s Analytics tool. It is possible to track your internal site searches if your internal search engine passes the search term in the query string as Google Analytics tracks everything entered in location bar of user’s browser.
Read moreKapitol Reef :: Magento store with 1 product
Can an online store have only one product? Sure it can and we give you the one that just launched. Kapitol Reef was founded to develop, perfect, manufacture and market a new breed of snorkels based upon pressure-balanced breathing in the aquatic environment. The entire focus for this company is to deliver best-of-class products, starting with the snorkel. Kapitol Reef is in the market for many years and this week they published a new site. Similar to our work on Teraflex project, we used WordPress and Magento platforms for the development.
Read moreHow to add login form to home page in Magento
I found a interesting question on Magento forums. There was a request to add a login page to a home page. I guess somebody wants to show a products only to a registered customers. Here is a quick guide how to do it.
Read moreMagento MySQL database diagram
If you worked with osCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded or any similar eCommerce platform before, you might find Magento database structure quite confusing when you see it for the first time. I advise you not to rush too much figuring out what is what by glancing through database. Try to spend first few hours getting familiar with some background. For purposes of flexibility, the Magento database heavily utilizes an Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) data model. As is often the case, the cost of flexibility is complexity. Is there something in Magento that is simple from developers point of view?
Read moreMaking use of Magento getSingleton method
In one of my previous articles I showed you how to use getModel and getData methods in Magento. Although we should not put those to methods at the same level, since I’d say the getModel is a bit more higher. Higher in sense, you first use the geModel to create the instance of object then you use getData to retrieve the data from that instance. I have said it before, and I’m saying it again; Magento is a great peace of full OOP power of PHP. It’s architecture is something not yet widely seen in CMS solutions.
One of the architectural goodies of Magento is it’s Singleton design pattern. In short, Singleton design pattern ensures a class has only one instance. Therefore one should provide a global point of access to that single instance of a class.
Read moreUPS API Quest
I got one fairly simple request to develop a custom shipping calculation for Magento that will use some special calculation using UPS API. Right now, Magento only calculates weight and the client needs something more advanced. I worked on similar stuff before, so I guessed this will not be much different. First step was to find an API for UPS. Well, this post is all about the search for API. I’ll update it when I manage to find it.
Read moreManual creation of Google Sitemap in Magento
Most of you probably know this, but let’s define what the sitemaps are. Sitemaps are a simple way for site creators to give search engines the information about pages on their site that are available for public. Basically, those are just 1 or more XML files that lists URLs for a site along with additional meta informatio about each URL (like last update, how often it changes, its importance relevant to other pages). With this in mind, search engines can be more clever while crawling the site. Click here see how sitemap of this site looks like.
Read moreOur first Magento Store :: TeraFlex Suspensions
After many weeks of work, our 1st Magento project hit the Web: TeraFlex Suspensions. As the purpose of the site in not primarily selling, but also branding and community development, we decided to use WordPress and Magento combination to accomplish the client’s goals.
Read moreFogBugz – Project Management Tool
Working on a project as only developer having direct contact with the client gives you the freedom not to think too much of a communication tool you will use. Couple of meetings, phone calls and an email will be just fine. After 3-4 weeks, you deliver the project and the communication is over. If that is your common scenario, than skip evaluation of this tool.
Read moreFeatured products on Magento frontpage
Note: This is one of our older posts that describes how to add featured product to the Magento home page. Meanwhile, we developed a Magento Community extension: Featured Products by Inchoo. We advise you to use it with Magento Connect in case you need featured products functionality.
Read moreDesigner’s Guide to Magento PDF download
After many developed CRE Loaded’s online stores and watching Magento development progress for quite some time, I decided it was time to use Magento with my next client. My starting point for development was official Designer’s guide. I’m the type of guy who likes to have documents nice&clean, so I tried to print it but print was a mess. That’s when I decided to create PDF of the official documentation for easy print. This is probably the best starting tutorial for creating a fresh new Magento template.
Read moreFancyBox – Fancy image zooming tool
There are many Lightbox clones this days. Some are fancier, some are lighter, some use jQuery, some do not. In this wast set of options, I found one I think I will prefer from today: FancyBox – fancy image zooming tool
It is based on jQuery and is a cool alternative to existing solutions. Here are some features:
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