New look and feel!

Posted on 18. Jun, 2009 by Fido .

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Hey everyone -
We’ve updated the site with a new look and feel!
We hope you like it better than the older theme. One definite improvement is that the comments within the code no longer cause weird formatting issues (about time!).

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Adding and removing javascript / css when and where you need it

Posted on 19. Feb, 2009 by Fido .

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Adding and removing javascript and css is handled separately within Magento. CSS is added in the usual fashion, where you have a <link rel=”stylesheet”… />. However, any included javascript (unless linked to “by hand” from a theme’s skin) is pulled via a php files which reads through the “js” folder in the root directory (root/js/index.php is responsible for this).

That is all well and good for Magento. The real question is how we, as developers, add these items when we need them. How you as a developer add css or javascript is, luckily, handled the same.

In this post, we will show how to add and remove javascript and css to a CMS page (and anywhere else) that you may need.

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Bestseller module (with Toolbar!) – Magento 1.2.1

Posted on 07. Feb, 2009 by Fido .

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How many people were disappointed to install Magento’s test data and find out that the home page “Best sellers” was just pain HTML placed into the CMS home page? I certainly was one of those people. That’s why I decided to create a Bestseller Module that was dynamic and harnessed the power of Magento’s built in features. This post shows you the code and gives and explanation of what is happening.

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What’s in a block? – Some Magento “basics”

Posted on 22. Jan, 2009 by Fido .

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Many developers are familiar with the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern that is seemingly ubiquitous throughout web frameworks. Looking through the code in Magento, however, we see many other components besides the M’s the V’s and the C’s.

Each module (a “module” meaning the separate directories within the “app/code/core/Mage” directory that comprise of Magento’s different functional areas) contains the usual Controller and Model. You’ll see that within each module, there are no Views (more on this later). You’ll also see extra tidbits, such as “helper” , “etc” and “sql”. These are (and are not) standard within the Zend Framework context and will not be discussed in this article. In these modules are also the sort of files which we work with very often. The all powerful block! This article will attempt to (hopefully accurately) describe just what a Block is and how it’s used.

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Run Magento Code Outside of Magento

Posted on 03. Nov, 2008 by Fido .

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Hi All -
Finally time for a new post! (Something I’m surprised I haven’t covered yet).
This post will inform you on how to run Magento code outside of Magento. All you need is to have access to Magento’s ‘app/Mage.php‘ file.

This will be handy code for a few things:

  • Integration with 3rd party items – shared sessions, or just shared themes
  • Ajax calls – although not the preferred solutions for Ajax calls, it is a quick and easy one

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Looking for some requests / feedback

Posted on 19. Oct, 2008 by Fido .

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Hi all -
We have had a very busy couple of weeks, which has resulted in less than normal posts here!
We want to thank you all for your kind words and feedback.
I would like to ask you, the readers, to take minute to make some general requests on what kinds of tutorials you would like to [...]

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Some custom Blocks to help you show products

Posted on 07. Oct, 2008 by Fido .

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I have a few custom blocks I’ve written / copied and tweaked from various posts on Magento’s forums. I noticed they are pretty universal in how they grab, filter and return a product collection to be used in various template files (.phtml files). The blocks below should all work from List.phtml (app\design\frontend\default\default\template\catalog\product\list.phtml).

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Welcome (again!) – exploremagento.com

Posted on 01. Oct, 2008 by Fido .

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Here is my new version of getfido.net – We have undergone a redesign, a new domain and new hosting!
I hope you enjoy the improvements of this blog as I have – I find it much more easier on the eyes along with easier to read.
Additionally, anyone who is interested in professional services for Magento can [...]

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How to override a Magento core block class

Posted on 17. Sep, 2008 by Fido .

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This tutorial will show you the proper method for overriding a Mage core class. This will work for Block and Model classes. Controllers are a slightly different story and for another tutorial.

Some discussion on breadcrumbs: I will be overriding the Core file: app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Breadcrumbs.php (which I will call [Breadcrumbs-B]). This file is not to be confused with the block: app/code/core/Mage/Page/Block/Html/Breadcrumbs.php (which I will call [Breadcrumbs-A]).

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Fix add to cart (redirect to homepage) bug

Posted on 12. Sep, 2008 by Fido .

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Some people have run into a bug (apparently since version 1.1.3) where (not matter the settings in the backend) the users were getting redirected to the home page after they added a product to the cart.

Naturally this won’t be what most people want. (There is the option in the backend to set “After adding a product redirect to shopping cart” to ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ but this bug is ignoring this).

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