Magento Skip Login/Registration at Checkout

A client wanted every checkout on his site to be a guest checkout. He was selling a very niche product and wanted to avoid hassling potential customers with a user log-in or registration form. The goal was to modify Magento’s One Page Checkout to completely skip Step 1: Login/Register and show Step 2: Billing Information.

We are going to:

1. Hide Step 1
2. Tell Magento that Step 1 was “completed” as Guest
3. Have Step 2 appear as Step 1

Here goes:

1. Hiding Step 1 – Login/Register

Open /app/design/frontend/<your_company>/<your_company>/template/checkout/onepage.phtml

Find:

<li id="opc-<?php echo $_stepId ?>" {...}

And replace it with:

<li <?php echo $i==1 ? 'style="display:none;"' : '' ?> id="opc-<?php echo $_stepId ?>"  {...}

2. Set Step 1 to equal Guest

Open /app/design/frontend/<your_company>/<your_company>/template/checkout/onepage/login.phtml

Basically, comment everything out and insert:

<input type="hidden" name="checkout_method" id="login:guest" value="guest" checked="checked" />
<script type="text/javascript">
Event.observe(window, 'load', function() {
checkout.setMethod();
});
</script>

3. Make Step 2 look like Step 1

Open /app/design/frontend/<your_company>/<your_company>/template/checkout/onepage.phtml

Find:

$i=0; foreach($this->getSteps() as $_stepId => $_stepInfo):

And replace it with:

$i=-1; foreach($this->getSteps() as $_stepId => $_stepInfo):

Finally, in the same file, change this snippet that we added in step 1:

echo $i==1

to:

echo $i===0

And there you have it. Credit goes to poster imagebox on this particular Magento how-to thread