In a multi store environment there is sometimes a need to change the store when the user clicks a link.
A “simple” way to do this is to pass the store along in the url (just add a “?___store=” either id or the store name, so for instance.
$stores = $category->getStoreIds(); echo '<p><a href="'. Mage::getUrl() . '?___store=' . end($stores). '">'.$category->getName()."</a></p>"; |
When editing Magento tempates or CMS pages you will have a need to access images and other content inside the skin/—/images folder. Instead of making hard coded links in the CMS or templates a better way is to get this from Magento (one of the many reasons for doing this is that it will still work if something in the directory structure is changed – like say you dev server is dev.something/shopverige but the live store is directly on a domain like say http://www.shopsverige.se
Here is how to do it:
<!-- this is inside of .phtml files --> <img src="<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl('images/coolimage.png'); ?>" alt="arrow"/> <!-- use this is in cms block --> <img src="{{skin url='images/coolerimage.png'}}" alt="" /> |
Creating confugurable products is more work than adding custom attributes but it might be better in some cases (keeping track of stock, having one set of attributes to select from etc).
In short the steps needed are
Create the attributes that will be configurable by the user – for our example they will be Size and Color
In the adminpanel this is under Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes
Scope needs to be set to Global and Input type to drop down. Once this is done then Use To Create Configurable Product is shown and this should be set to yes. Setting required to yes is a good idea as well.
Under label / options create a label (for instance size) and give the different options it can take.
Repeat for all attributes you want to create (for instance size and color)
Create the attribute set that will be assigned to the variant products – for our example, we’ll call it “T-shirt”
Now we’re ready to create an attribute set called “T-shirt” to start using for this product. Go to “Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attribute Sets” and press “Add New Set”.
Give the new set a name and then drag and drop the attributes to the group where you want them to be when creating a product.
Create the individual variant products
Create a product and make sure that you use the attribute set you have created. Add the attributes where you placed them.
Repeat for all the products you have
Create the configurable product, and add the “T-shirt” attribute set
Add the individual variants to this configurable product
This can be done when the configurable product is created or later on using edit product.
And then it should look something like this in the shop
Some products have a number of options that are important for the customer to select.
Here I show how to make a product with options (color and size) where Magento only sees one product – so it won’t it will not be possible to see how many large in red you have from Magento.
When you create a product in the admin panel there is a label Custom Options.
Use “Add new option” to make the option (color, size or whatnot)
Then for each of the options use add new row to add the deferent values that the option can have.
The column labeled price is for adding a extra cost for a option (if for instance the red shirt should be more expensive).
Then this will look something like this in the store
Then only down sides I have seen with this is that I have to add the options one time for each of the products (but that is also nice since not all products have the same values) and that Magento will treat this as one single product so I can’t let Magento manage the stock for this/these products.
Sometimes there is a need to do a redirect from inside a Magento page where you might not know if headers are sent or not – Or maybe you wish to make a new redirect function where you don’t have to worry about writing different code if the headers are sent or not.
This is a way to do a redirect where a javascript redirect is used if headers have been sent (and thus it is no longer possible to use a header redirect)
if (!headers_sent()) { Mage::app()->getResponse()->setRedirect(Mage::getBaseUrl() . 'portal/'); } else { $baseUrl = Mage::getBaseUrl() . 'portal/'; print '<script type="text/javascript">'; print "window.location.href = '{$baseUrl}';"; print '</script>'; } |
And the function headers_sent() is a php function so that can of course be used outside of Magento in any php scrip where a header location is nice but not always possible.
When I was truing to upload images to products in the Magento admin panel I got the following error:
SSL Error: Invalid or self-signed certificate while uploading image from backend
The way I solved this issue was by setting the timezone on the computer that I was uploading from to the same timezone as the settings in Magento.
Other suggestions to try out if that don’t work:
To redirect before headers are started to be sent (for instance from inside a controller) the following works:
Mage::app()->getFrontController()->getResponse()->setRedirect(Mage::getUrl('portal')); |
This will redirect to the page called portal.
However if you try to do this from a view then you will get an error message about headers already having been sent.
If you need to do a redirect form inside a view then using javascript is one way to do this:
echo 'Due to SOMEREASON you are being redirected <a herf="' . Mage::getUrl('portal') . '">Please click here if nothing happens</a>'; echo '<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- window.location = "' . Mage::getUrl('portal') . '" //--> </script>'; |
However a tip is to reconsider if you really need to do the redirect from the view, doing it from the controller is a lot easier and quicker.
Sometimes there is a need to load a store from the store id, this is not hard to do once you find the right function.
Mage::getModel('core/store')->load($storeId); //a store object |
A store object might look like this. Each of the data has a get and a set fucntion (so getIsActive() returns if the store is active or not)
Mage_Core_Model_Store Object ( [_cacheTag:protected] => 1 [_eventPrefix:protected] => store [_eventObject:protected] => store [_priceFilter:protected] => [_website:protected] => [_group:protected] => [_configCache:protected] => [_configCacheBaseNodes:protected] => Array ( [0] => catalog/price/scope [1] => web/secure/base_url [2] => web/secure/use_in_adminhtml [3] => web/secure/use_in_frontend [4] => web/url/use_store [5] => web/unsecure/base_url [6] => web/seo/use_rewrites [7] => web/unsecure/base_link_url [8] => web/secure/base_link_url [9] => general/locale/code ) [_dirCache:protected] => Array() [_urlCache:protected] => Array() [_baseUrlCache:protected] => Array() [_session:protected] => [_isAdminSecure:protected] => [_isFrontSecure:protected] => [_isReadOnly:private] => [_resourceName:protected] => core/store [_resource:protected] => [_resourceCollectionName:protected] => core/store_collection [_dataSaveAllowed:protected] => 1 [_data:protected] => Array ( [store_id] => 64 [code] => mystore [website_id] => 1 [group_id] => 25 [name] => mystore [sort_order] => 0 [is_active] => 1 ) [_origData:protected] => Array ( [store_id] => 64 [code] => mystore [website_id] => 1 [group_id] => 25 [name] => mystore [sort_order] => 0 [is_active] => 1 ) [_idFieldName:protected] => [_isDeleted:protected] => ) |
An an example code to find if the store with id 5 is active or not
if (Mage::getModel('core/store')->load($storeId)->getIsActive()) //do something if we are active else //do something else if the store is not active |
A sitemap is a xml file that is used by (for instance) search engines to get a better overview of your site. It gives details about what pages exists and how ranks the pages towards themselves.
Despite the name the sitemap is not Google specific, it can be used for any search engine, or any other reason that you need a sitemap.
First figure out where to place the sitemap(s) and make that location writable by the webserver.
In a Linux environment this is done from the console this is done like:
mkdir sitemap sudo chown admin:www-data sitemap sudo chmod 775 sitemap touch sitemap/index.php |
The touch index.php will create a empty index file (that keeps the folder from being listed.
In the admin panel go to “Catalog->Goolge Sitemap->Add sitemap”
Fill out this form with values that makes sense to you.
Note: If you have sveral stores one website, then all product that are visible on that website is added to the sitemap.
In the admin pangel go to “System->Configuration->Google sitemap”
As always, change to values that makes sense to you
Another (older) way of doing this is described by the guys at inchoo
Magento stores the base url in the database.
The easy way to change this is to use the admin interfece, but if that is not possible (for instance you have swapped ip for a dev machine – or moved data from a existing installation to another machine) then it is possible to do the update in the database.