Make sure the file permissions are set correctly.

(0777 might be too generous, but we don’t have time to figure these things out for sure).

This happened to me today. Turns out my IDE (NuSphere’s PhpEd, an excellent PHP IDE by the way) has a setting for default folder/file permissions when creating new files. Insufficient file permissions were manifesting themselves as “Invalid block type …” errors. I’m sure it could be responsible for other quirkiness when doing custom work.

Or when one of your eyes starts twitching.

*sigh*

As with most payment gateways, the steps involved are a matter of:

1. Gathering the appropriate information (provided by the gateway service)
2. Enter the information into the Magento Admin Panel
3. Activate the payment module

Full procedure

Fortunately, I stumbled upon one possible solution.  The method doesn’t involve creating a full-blown module, rather, just a few database modifications using phpMyAdmin.

Summarized, the process comes down to:

1. Create a new row in the eav_attribute table, one that mimics a category’s meta-description attribute with everything being the same except for a unique identifier and a label.
2. Create a new row in the eav_entity_attribute table, to provide a sort order for your newly created attribute, following in the format footsteps of the existing rows.

For the fully detailed procedure, see Create Custom Category Attributes with phpMyAdmin

Basically, the procedure involves going into the database, finding the appropriate row that contains the password, and assigning the new password using MD5.

With Text attributes such as Name and Description, you can do something like:

$product->setName( 'My Sweet Shirt' );
$product->setDescription( 'This shirt will make you look good, thus impressing girls.' );

Unfortunately, this won’t work for attributes whose values are predefined.  Instead of cursing Magento, think of it as a data-integrity/validation measure.

Anyway, assuming you already have a $product object, our overall process will be to:

1. Load an attribute object for the attribute you want to work on
2. Load the collection of that attribute’s values
3. Make your choices (different for Dropdown and Multiselect)
4. Save the product

1. Load an attribute object for the attribute you want to work on

$attribute = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute');
$attribute->loadByCode( 4, 'color' );

2. Load the collection of that attribute’s values

$values = array();
$valuesCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('eav/entity_attribute_option_collection')
	->setAttributeFilter( $attribute->getId() )
	->setStoreFilter( Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID, false)
	->load();
 
foreach ($valuesCollection as $item) {
	$values[$item->getValue()] = $item->getId();
}

3. Make your choice – DROPDOWN

$product->setColor( $values['Blue'] ); // just do whatever you need to code 'Blue' instead of hard-coding it

3. Make your choices – MULTISELECT

$product->addData( array(
	'color' => $values['Blue'] .','. $values['Red'] .','. $values['Black']  // just putting together a comma-separated list of values
) );

4. Save the product

$product->save();

This builds off the solution posted by member “icvu” here: http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/main.php/viewthread/69925/ — specifically the addData() part.

Thanks, and have fun setting attribute values.

• Rebuild Catalog Index

  Mage::getSingleton('catalog/index')->rebuild();

• Rebuild Flat Catalog Product

  Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_flat_indexer')->rebuild();

• Inventory Stock

  Mage::getSingleton('cataloginventory/stock_status')->rebuild();

For more cache refreshes, such as:

• Catalog Rewrites
• Layered Navigation Indices
• Product Image
• Search Index

… please refer to the source of this knowledge http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/43238/#t156277

getSkinUrl() does more than just generate the proper URL, it also verifies that the file exists.  If it doesn’t find the file within the store’s /yourtheme folder, it will revert to /default.

• Dynamic product data in Marketing Campaign Landing Pages
• Dynamic Information such as Recently Viewed Items into Content Pages
• Promotional images to position in different blocks, side columns and other locations throughout the storefront
• Interactive elements and action blocks (external review systems, video chats, voting and subscription forms)
• Alternative navigation elements (tag clouds, catalog image sliders)
• Create interactive and dynamic flash elements easily configured and embedded within content pages for enhanced user experience

Originally posted on the official Magento Blog.  Continue reading for more on:

• What are Widgets?
• How to Develop a Widget
• Terminology
• Widget Examples in Magento CE 1.4, EE 1.6

Widget ideas anyone?  What should I work on?

Clear shopping cart

foreach( Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getQuote()->getItemsCollection() as $item ){
    Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart')->removeItem( $item->getId() )->save();
}

Clear entire session

Mage::getSingleton(‘checkout/session’)->clear();

Happy coding!

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

Fortunately, removing test data is as easy as running SQL queries:

Clear customers:

TRUNCATE TABLE `customer_entity`

Clear orders:

TRUNCATE TABLE `sales_order`

Clear searches:

TRUNCATE TABLE `catalogsearch_query`

Clear tags:

TRUNCATE TABLE `tag`
TRUNCATE TABLE `tag_relation`

You might have expected to meddle with other tables, like all the `sales_order_*` or `customer_entity_*` tables. However, thanks to the database’s various constraints, any related rows are automatically deleted thus preventing orphan data.

One would expect that there should be a price matrix that might look like:

But if you only have simple products:

Black + 1″ = $1.00
Black + 3″ = $1.40
White + 1″ = $1.05
White + 2″ = $1.25
Chrome + 3″ = $1.55
Chrome + 4″ = $1.75

… then you don’t need the full matrix.  Even if you did need the full matrix, how do you set up simple/configurable product pricing in Magento?

Solution:

This Simple Configurable Products extension by Matt Dean.  From the extension page:

This extension changes the way that the pricing of configurable products works in Magento. With this extension enabled, a configurable product’s own price is never used. Instead, the price used is that of the appropriate associated simple product.

This gives site owners direct control to set the price of every configuration of a product, while still giving users the flexibility they usually get with configurable products. (There’s no more having to set rules such as: +20% for blue, -£10 for small, +15% for leather. You just price the underlying small-blue-leather product at £199.99 and that’s what the user pays.)

You still have to create the configurable products and set certain attributes to be the configurable ones ( e.g. “Color” and “Size” in the previous example ).  Set the prices of simple products (no need to set the price of configurable products), and the extension takes care of the rest.  In the front-end, users will still be specifying Color and Size, and prices will change accordingly.

Happy pricing!

Let’s start at the beginning, at installation.  Your web server likely has capable hardware, so you need to be sure that your software configuration meets requirements.  Luckily the host I’m on was set up just fine the way it was.  Obviously you need to download the software – I chose to download the Full Release (version 1.1.8 at the time).  The zipped package contains 6k+ files so you may want to look into an “unzip on the server” solution or you’ll have to wait a long time like I did.  If you decide to wait, take the time to read through the User Guide and the Designer Guide.

Setting up Magento

Once you have the files uploaded, CHMOD the directory (where you dropped those files) to 777.  Then navigate to the installer script – http://www.yourdomain.com/your-magento-folder/.  The script is very simple, and the most important part of it is inputting database connection information.  Proceed to create an admin account and log in to the administration panel.

I easily set up a “website”, “store”, and “store view”.  For my purposes, just one of each was necessary so I named them “clientname_website”, “clientname_store”, and “clientname_storeview”.  I haven’t set up any roles other than Administrators yet, since for now it’s just myself and another developer .

My two main tasks to work on:

1. Style the front-end to look like our client’s existing storefront
2. Import the client’s existing product catalog data (including manufacturer and category data)

I decided to work on styling the front-end first, since it seemed to be the more difficult task.  I imagined thousands of CSS declarations I’d have to modify, not to mention figuring out the XML-based layout system.  As for the catalog import, I imagined it would simply be the mapping of data fields into the Magento model.  I prefer to tackle more difficult tasks first, for peace-of-mind reasons.

Theming Magento

As I predicted, getting Magento to look the way I needed proved to be a very difficult task.  I was hoping for a more Wordpress style header/content/left+right/footer type of deal, but what I saw was something much more complicated.  To make the simplest of changes took many hours, with my development process being something like:

1. Figure out which file(s) contains the code (HTML, XML)  I need to edit.
2. Verify I have the right files.  Make a small test change and see if output is affected.
3. Remind self of what “block, layout, and template” mean.
4. ( trial/error, server timeout ) x 10
5. Break.  Resume. Now, what was I doing? /MyCompany/MyCompany/?  Oh right.
6. Search Google on how to solve the problem.  Search is fruitless.  Try Experts-Exchange.
7. ( trial/error, server timeout ) x 10
8. Almost there.
9. Major revelation! Break.

All in all, theming was/is very complicated.  It’s hard to determine what references what, and how to go about making changes to get the desired effect.  My impression is that the Magento team would have us use their system in one way, and only that way.  The whole hierarchical system seems like a good idea, but in practice it’s cumbersome and difficult to master.

Importing the Product Catalog

After walking barefoot over hot coals, or theming Magento, I was really hoping that importing the product catalog would be a no-brainer – just map fields in my existing database to fields in the Magento database.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Magento’s database model is an instance of the entity-attribute-value model (EAV).  The difference between EAV and conventional modeling is that table records don’t represent an instance of a data object.  Instead, the data object’s values are spread out over multiple tables, making manipulating the delicate database directly incredibly complex.

The route I decided to take, as recommended on several sites, was to:

1. Create a single category (under “root category” or “Default Category” of course)
2. Create and assign a single product to that category.
3. Run the “Export All Products” profile to generate a CSV file
4. Export existing data to CSV according to the exported CSV’s column format
5. Upload the new CSV using the “Import All Products” profile.

When exporting existing data to the Magento format, be sure to use the category ID values for category instead of the category names.  You can find out a category’s ID by navigating to its “edit category” page and looking at the URL.  The ID is in the URL.

When running the “Import All Products” profile, you might have to limit the number of records that you import at a time.  If that doesn’t work, (as in my case) try reducing the number of rows that are in the CSV file.  You would have to upload many many CSV files and run the profile over and over again for those files.  I don’t understand why adding records to just a few tables should consume a large share of server resources.  Import crashes for me a lot, which isn’t good because I’m unclear of whether all products have been imported or not.

Speed and Performance

I’ve decided to dedicate a section to speed and performance, because Magento’s slowness was a huge distraction during the development process.  It would be nice if at the very least that the system didn’t crash every 1/5 page loads.  It would also be nice if I could see the results of a few CSS declarations quickly.  There seems to be a LOT of overhead in Magento, I could go on forever about it.

Based on what I’ve read, you should go with a dedicated or a virtual-private-server (VPS) if you choose to run Magento.  A lot of developers working on a shared hosting solution seem to have huge speed issues.  Trust me, save yourself a lot of headaches and upgrade your hosting.

Now I’ve only just started to become familiar with the platform.  I should also mention that I have no experience working with other eCommerce platforms like OSCommerce or anything, but the talk-of-the-town is that Magento blows everything else out of the water.  More importantly, based on what I’ve read in their comprehensive User Guide, the software can handle (1) everything our client needs, (2) everything they’ve requested, and (3) everything our client hasn’t even thought of yet.

Some of the cool stuff includes:

• Automatic product comparisons page (based on product attributes that you define)
• “Layered navigation” – when browsing through a category of products, the layered navigation offers nifty drill-down filters so shoppers can easily find products that are within their budget/needs/tastes.
• Related products, upselling, and cross-sellling (important to know the distinction between the three)
• URL rewrites (very very very important for SEO)
• Support for UPS, UPS XML, FedEx, USPS, and DHL
• Multiple images per product and slick zoom-in capability

For the full feature list, go here.

Expect more posts regarding Magento to come as I journey through deployment.  This post was just kind of like a trailer.