Links : 25 free templates for Magento

• You can use a linux script to automatically modify magento email template files in your language / email folder
  • script 1
    http://www.osetemplates.com/?p=138
  • script 2 (slightly better because incorporates store specific vairables in the script)
    http://www.pridedesign.ie/content/magento-email-template-script
• You can also use the email template adapter extension to get the job done via magento’s administration interface

• Magento’s default layout is shipped with a rss page that requires activation in the admin, in the system->configuration, check rss feed to activate the /rss page that displays available feeds (check out our example on Rue de Siam)
• Import your feed to your facebook page or profile to get new produtcs or product special published automatically on your wall :
  1. Connect to facebook, and click  ”My Notes” from the navigational menu. If you have already entered notes on your page, then they will load for you to preview or edit.
  2. If you have not written an article, write one that announces the rss publication (e.g. new articles coming soon), in order to enable the settings menu. Select the “Import Blog” or “Edit Import Settings” link in the Notes Setting section. If you are already importing from a blog, the URL will appear here. Remeber that in the Notes applications, you can only import from 1 source at a time.  To change the url of the feed, click  ”Stop Importing”
  3. Enter the URL for the RSS feed in the box. Check the box next to the statement that you actually own the content.
  4. Click the “Start Importing” button. Facebook will import the content of the RSS feed for you to preview. If everything looks good, then go ahead and hit the “Continue” button. Now your RSS feed is automatically imported into your “Notes” section.
  5. Administrators note : Facebook RSS in articles application will not put a heavy load on your server , as they are pulled every 2 hours, but be careful of heavy loads if you have a larger reader base as images will be loaded from full article display in facebook

there is one folder for shipment, one for invoice, and one for credit. The product display occurs in the DEfault file where the Mage_Sales_Model_Order_Pdf_Items_Abstract is defined. What I did was simply instanciate a product object using the id from order / items, and get the image file using the following code in the draw function :

There are a lot of discussions going on about Magento’s one page checkout procedure : it is supposed to enhance customer payment experience by probviding ajax based single page order progress. But there are alos some discussions in the forum on how to enhance this process which is quite unusual and might discourage some customers. In a previous post I reviewed the code that produces sidebar shopping cart in default pages with right margin. The solution below explains how to add a full shopping cart display for the customer’s that trying to complete an order.

Full template vs AJAX based loading

The code that builds the one page checkout (checkout/onepage/) sidebar display is made of two separate components :

• the first loading of the page is a full template loading, meaning every component of the page is loaded at once, and returned to the browser via a standard HTTP request, returning HTML. The HTML produced at this stage for the right column is described in the checkout_onepage_index section of the layout/checkout.xml configuration file. I added the shopping cart display by  simply adding a block to the right :

         <reference name="right">
              <action method="unsetChildren"></action>
              <block type="checkout/onepage_progress" name="checkout.progress" before="-" template="checkout/onepage/progress.phtml"/>
              <block type="checkout/cart_sidebar" before="-" name="catalog.cart.sidebar"    template="checkout/cart/sidebarCheckout.phtml"/>
        </reference>

• Following steps are processed via AJAX calls (function reloadProgressBlock in opcheckout.js) that invoke the the checkout_onepage_progress section of the layout/checkout.xml configuration file. Below you’ll find the same code added to this section, that adds a cart block to the raw HTML returned by this AJAX call.

     <checkout_onepage_progress>
          <!-- Mage_Checkout -->
          <remove name="right"/>
          <remove name="left"/>
   <block type="checkout/cart_sidebar" output="toHtml"  name="catalog.cart.sidebar"    template="checkout/cart/sidebarCheckout.phtml"/>
  
          <block type="checkout/onepage_progress" name="root" output="toHtml" template="checkout/onepage/progress.phtml">
              <block type="checkout/onepage_payment_info" name="payment_info">
                  <action method="setInfoTemplate"><method></method><template></template></action>
              </block>
          </block>
  
      </checkout_onepage_progress>

You will notice that we deliberately position the sidebar cart XML block , in the first case after, and in the second case before other blocks, so that this block always appears first on your one page chcekout right margin. What you finally need now in order for this to work is to code the sidebarCheckout template : take the checkout/cart/sidebar.phtml  template and modify the display to produce best reassuring order total for your customer before he finally decides to pay !

I’ve finally released my first Magento website, and it proves to be a  real SEO winner (100% increase in visits after 2 weeks). RuedeSiam is a furniture importer based in Brittany. Now you know why I bothered comparing commercial and opensource Flash based zoomers : Rue de Siam’s website site features an implementation of image  a flash based zoom within a prototype lightbox gallery  (check out this one) . Interesting too is the specific template for the “At your home” showcase category that uses products with  specific layout. Magento is really great for customising layouts, I suppose that’s partly a big feature of Zend Framework expressed at its best. One technique I used a lot is the css based text over image transparency effect that I detailed a while ago for Wordpress on this blog. Works fine with Magento images categories except that the background image really has to be adjusted perfectly so I used phpthumbs instead of Magento’s resizing helpers that seemed to complicated to understand at first.   I’ve also covered  various development challenges that I shared on this blog during the development :

• products special display on home page,
• display new product icon on product list
• how to display products from other categories on the product view page

And a few tips :

• Display custom attributes on product page
• Magento static blocks display

One advice : once you’re running a Magento production web site, be careful with upgrades. The Sales extension did not work with 1.3.0 on my development server and I’m sticking to 1.2.x for the moment.

• Step 1 : create the product special block  class/ Note that the getSpecialProducts function is inspired from the sales catalog list extension
  create the file app\code\local\PoleOuest\Catalog\Block\Product\Special.php
  1. <?
  2. class PoleOuest_Catalog_Block_Product_Special extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_Abstract
  3. {
  4. protected function _getStoreId()
  5. {
  6. $storeId = null;
  7. if($storeId == null) {
  8. $storeId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getId();
  9. }
  10. return $storeId
  11. }
  12. protected function _getCustomerGroupId()
  13. {
  14. $custGroupID = null;
  15. if($custGroupID == null) {
  16. $custGroupID = Mage::getSingleton(‘customer/session’)->getCustomerGroupId();
  17. }
  18. return $custGroupID;
  19. }
  20.  
  21. // POLEOUEST Method from salescatalog
  22. public function getSpecialProducts()
  23. {
  24. if (is_null($this->_productCollection)) {
  25. $storeId = $this->_getStoreId();
  26. $websiteId = Mage::app()->getStore($storeId)->getWebsiteId();
  27. $custGroup = $this->_getCustomerGroupId();
  28. $product = Mage::getModel(‘catalog/product’);
  29. $todayDate = $product->getResource()->formatDate(time(), false);
  30. $rulePriceWhere = "({{table}}.rule_date is null) or ({{table}}.rule_date=’$todayDate’ and {{table}}.website_id=’$websiteId’ and {{table}}.customer_group_id=’$custGroup’)";
  31. $productAttributes = array_flip(Mage::getSingleton(‘catalog/config’)->getProductAttributes());
  32. unset($productAttributes[‘price_type’]);
  33. unset($productAttributes[‘price_view’]);
  34. $productAttributes = array_flip($productAttributes);
  35. $specials = $product->setStoreId($storeId)->getResourceCollection()
  36. ->addAttributeToFilter(’special_price’, array(‘gt’=>0), ‘left’)
  37. ->addAttributeToFilter(’special_from_date’, array(‘date’=>true, ‘to’=> $todayDate), ‘left’)
  38. ->addAttributeToFilter(array(
  39. array(‘attribute’=>’special_to_date’, ‘date’=>true, ‘from’=>$todayDate),
  40. array(‘attribute’=>’special_to_date’, ‘is’ => new Zend_Db_Expr(‘null’))
  41. ), ”, ‘left’)
  42. ->addAttributeToSort(’special_from_date’, ‘desc’)
  43. ->addAttributeToSelect($productAttributes, ‘inner’)
  44. ->joinTable(‘catalogrule/rule_product_price’, ‘product_id=entity_id’, array(‘rule_price’=>‘rule_price’, ‘rule_start_date’=>‘latest_start_date’, ‘rule_date’=>‘rule_date’), $rulePriceWhere, ‘left’)
  45. ;
  46.  
  47. $specials->getSelect()->order(new Zend_Db_Expr(‘RAND()’))->limit(1); ;
  48. $rulePriceCollection = Mage::getResourceModel(‘catalogrule/rule_product_price_collection’)
  49. ->addFieldToFilter(‘website_id’, $websiteId)
  50. ->addFieldToFilter(‘customer_group_id’, $custGroup)
  51. ->addFieldToFilter(‘rule_date’, $todayDate)
  52. ;
  53.  
  54. $productIds = $rulePriceCollection->getProductIds();
  55. if (!empty($productIds)) {
  56. $specials->getSelect()->orWhere(‘e.entity_id in (’.implode(‘,’,$productIds).‘)’);
  57. }
  58.  
  59. Mage::getSingleton(‘catalog/product_status’)->addVisibleFilterToCollection($specials);
  60. Mage::getSingleton(‘catalog/product_visibility’)->addVisibleInCatalogFilterToCollection($specials);
  61. $this->_productCollection = $specials;
  62. }
  63. return $this->_productCollection;
  64. }
  65. }
  66. ?>
• Step 2 : add new block to your etc/config.xml in global/blocks/catalog
  <rewrite>
  <product_special>PoleOuest_Catalog_Block_Product_Special</product_special>
  </rewrite>
• Step 3 : create your template catalog/product/PoleOuestSpecial.phtml with the loop inspired from the catalog/product/list.phtml
• Step 4 : declare your block in your layout/catalog.xml in the right.permanent.callout block
  <block type=”catalog/product_special” name=”product_special” as=”product_special” template=”catalog/product/PoleOuestSpecial.phtml” />
• Step 5 : call your child HTML where you want it in \template\callouts\right_col.phtml :
  <?php echo $this->getChildHtml(’product_special’) ?>

and let us know how it went for you

How to load new attribute : in Magento the new attribute is defined by two database fields (or attributes) : new from and new to .

• Using these parameters in list.phtml requires you to modify the attribute set returned by the Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List class to be found in app\code\core\Mage\Catalog\Block\Product\List.php
• in function _getProductCollection, paste the following line
  $this->_productCollection
  ->addAttributeToSelect(’news_from_date’)
  ->addAttributeToSelect(’news_to_date’);
• obvisouly this comes just after the product collection definition around line 75 of the List.php
  $this->_productCollection = $layer->getProductCollection();
• your list.phtml template now has access to the data and checking that a product is new is as simple as performing PHP based date comparisons. We provide here basic comparison that will only work for products where both news_from and news_to have been filled. Add the following PHP code somewhere in your productcollection loop and the work is done !
  $now = date(”Y-m-d”);
  $newsFrom= substr($_product->getData(’news_from_date’),0,10);
  $newsTo=  substr($_product->getData(’news_to_date’),0,10);
  if ($now>=$newsFrom && $now<=$newsTo)
  {?> <h3 class=”nouveauteProductList” >NEW PRODUCT!<h3><?};
  ?>

This hack will be used on RueDeSiam’s website (to be released next month,bookmark it now!)

“<?php echo $_product->getAttributeName() ?>
There is one thing different here though. If your Attribute Code is “shirt_size”, then you would use getShirtSize(). Remove the underscores and capitalize the first letter of each word. It is picky that way. if you use getshirtsize(), it won’t work.

If you are using a dropdown or a multiple select, you have to call it a little differently:

<?php echo $_product->getAttributeText(’shirt_size’) ?>

This method requires the actual Attribute Code. If you are displaying the value from a dropdown, you’ll get exactly what you need with this call. If you are wanting to display the values from a multiple select, it will return an array.“

Inner workings

How does this work ? well the attribute function is a method of the Mage_Catalog_Model_Product, which isn extension of Mage_Catalog_Model_Abstract, itself extending Mage_Core_Model_Abstract, itself extending Varien_Object where we find the famous __call function that traps all undeclared or undefined  functions from the class : this is where the logic is implemented and we see that any undeclared function starting with get is defined to fin the associated data , optionnally using provided arguments :