We have the pleasure to review another great e-book about Magento. This times it’s the turn for and advance level of Magento knowledge, PHP developers new in the platform will love this book: Magento PHP Developer’s Guide

With a detailed introduction to setting up and configure a LAMP server, the book will guide you through the must-know subjects about developing in Magento. This covers an entire chapter of the famous Zend Framework, the Magento version of Model View Controller, specific topics about UI/UX development, a chapter to Test your modules, and of course all you must to know about Deployment and Distribution of your modules or extensions.

You don’t have to be a “hacker” to take advantaje of this book, if you have let’s say 1 year of PHP development experience and a basic understanding about e-commerce platforms, this book will take you to and advanced level of understaning about Magento and how to extend it’s functionalities. I found out very useful section called “Packing our extension”, where you can learn how to make a package of your extension or theme to then upload it into your MagentoConnect account, so it will be available for customers to install it by copy and pasting a single line to the MagentoConnect Manager panel within Magento backend.

Hope this book surprise you like it did with me

Cheers!

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If you’re new in Magento and feel kind of lost, this book is definitely for you. “Instant E-Commerce with Magento: Build a Shop” begings with a very good explanation about the Magento install process and the basic configurations to apply, an essential subject when working with this platform since you can have a very annoying headache if this isn’t set correctly.

This e-book is targeted to people who haven’t a deep knowledge about e-commerce platforms or MVC (Model View Controller) systems. Very useful if you are not a developer and want to have your shop online. You don’t have to be scared about the big beast Magento, this book will help you out a lot.

The Magento Admin-panel is perfectly analyzed here, and it covers all the basic and fundamental stuff you must know. I especially liked section “Catalog and Shopping Cart Price Rules”, where this great feature of Magento is explained to make it work correctly. No matter which kind of store you have, you would like to make promotion and discounts for specific kind of products. Also, of course, you will want to be very acquanted about Managing Orders, well, another reason to read this book.

If you’re interested in getting this book, follow this link.

Cheers!

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Whether you’re a Magento developer or not, this is a must read book about Magento that you can’t miss. From basic options to optimize your Magento install, to advanced PHP/MySQL settings, this book covers it all.

You may know how heavy is Magento, and how a server to host it should be. However, there are times  when a complete server can’t always carry Magento exploiting its full performance. Here’s when this free open-source software provides us with a complete package of options to optimize the platform, and this is why “Instant Magento Performance Optimization How-to [eBook]” is the perfect guide.

No matter what kind of online store you have, you may want to speed up your site load time.  I think that’s why this book begins introducing a table containing results about CSS, JS and Overall loading time before any tweaking to the Magento install is done and then a comparison to this table but after the Merge CSS and JS options are enabled. For example, by merging the CSS files from the Admin-panel, you can reduce the server request from 3 to 1, leading to a remarkable time load reduction.

Personally, i recommend chapter called “Checking the configuration”, where you can learn the complete list of settings you should check in order to improve and keep healthy your online store. If you want to avoid “Magento headaches”, you need to be acquainted about your own store settings, here’s how this chapter begins: “The best way to give up on Magento is to let your configuration mislead you.”. It speaks for itself!.

If you’re interested in this great book, just follow this link.

Cheers!

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Let’s say you have a block call to a  featured-products.phtml  in your CMS Homepage content:

{{block type=”catalog/product_list” category_id=”5″ template=”catalog/product/featured-products.phtml”}}

The file  featured-products.phtml  displays all products under category with ID=5  ,but what about if you want to display only 10 products of that category?, check this:

Add this property to the line above:  is_homepage=”1″  

The line will look like:

{{block type=”catalog/product_list” is_homepage=”1″ category_id=”5″ template=”catalog/product/featured-products.phtml”}}

Now open up   featured-products.phtml  then find this line:

<?php $i=0; foreach ($_productCollection as $_product): ?>

Just below it, add this:

<?php if($this->getIsHomepage() && $i==10) break; ?>

$i==10 means it will display 10 products, you can change this value to your choice.

That’s it!, another useful Magento tip!

Cheers!!

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We’ll modify only 2 files:

app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/layout/catalog.xml

app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

catalog.xml :

1)Find  “Category layered navigation layout” section or “Category default layout” section (if you don’t use layered-nav in your category pages), then add this lines or modify the exisitng ones if you already have them:

<reference name=”root”>
<action method=”setTemplate”><template>page/1column.phtml</template></action>
</reference>

Why we do this?: we set 1column layout in category pages since we want to take advantage of the full width of the page, so we can set 4 columns of products (grid mode of course). But it’s not mandatory, you can choose between 1column,2columns-right,etc. to fit your needs.

list.phtml :

2) Find this line under  <?php // Grid Mode ?>  section:

<?php $_columnCount = $this->getColumnCount(); ?>

Change it to:

<?php $_columnCount = 4  ?>

Save all files, clear your Magento cache. That’s it, you’ll get a category list with 4 columns of products, like so:

All right!, enjoy your store!

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We’ll create a template file called: new_products.phtml

The content would be:

<?php
$todayDate  = Mage::app()->getLocale()->date()->toString(Varien_Date::DATETIME_INTERNAL_FORMAT);

$_productCollection=$this->getLoadedProductCollection();
$_productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel(‘catalog/product_collection’)
->addAttributeToSelect(‘*’)
->addAttributeToFilter(‘news_from_date’, array(‘date’ => true, ‘to’ => $todayDate))
->addAttributeToFilter(‘news_to_date’, array(‘or’=> array(
0 => array(‘date’ => true, ‘from’ => $todayDate),
1 => array(‘is’ => new Zend_Db_Expr(‘null’)))
), ‘left’);

$now = date(“Y-m-d”);
$newsFrom= substr($_productCollection->getData(‘news_from_date’),0,10);
$newsTo=  substr($_productCollection->getData(‘news_to_date’),0,10);

?>

<?php if(!$_productCollection->count()): ?>
<div>
<?php echo $this->__(‘There are no products matching the selection. Please provide a category ID.’) ?>
</div>
<?php else: ?>

<?php if ($now>=$newsFrom && $now<=$newsTo)?>
<?php $i=0; foreach ($_productCollection as $_product): ?>
<a href=”<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>”>
<img src=”<?php echo $this->helper(‘catalog/image’)->init($_product, ‘small_image’)->resize(110, 110); ?>” alt=”<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>” />
</a>
<?php endforeach ?>
<?php endif ;?>

Then you can call this template by adding a block call like this in your CMS content pages:

{{block type="catalog/product_list" template="catalog/product/new_products.phtml"}}

Hope you like it!. Cheers!

The post How to display New products in Magento appeared first on Premium Magento Themes | HelloThemes | Templates.

1) Open up app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/layout/page.xml Under this line: <block type=”page/html_header” name=”header” as=”header”> You must have this line:

<block type=”directory/currency” name=”store_currency_selector” as=”store_currency_selector” template=”directory/currency.phtml”/>

Like so:

2) Now open up app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/page/html/header.phtml Be sure to have this line:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml(‘store_currency_selector’) ?>

For example:

That’s it!, the store-switcher will display in the header of your theme:

The post How to display Currency Switcher in header appeared first on Premium Magento Themes | HelloThemes | Templates.

B) Once you have assigned the language to the corresponding store-view, the store-switcher should display by default, if not, please follow this easy steps:

1) Open up app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/layout/page.xml Under this line: <block type=”page/html_header” name=”header” as=”header”> You must have this line:

<block type=”page/switch” name=”store_language” as=”store_language” template=”page/switch/flags.phtml”/>

Like so:

2) Now open up app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/page/html/header.phtml Be sure to have this line:

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml(‘store_language’) ?>

For example:

That’s it!, the store-switcher will display in the header of your theme:

The post How to display store-switcher with country flags appeared first on Premium Magento Themes | HelloThemes | Templates.

The most voted design will receive a brand new iPhone and a free “Theme Club” subscription. Also, the best 10 designs will receive prizes too.

Show us your creative skills by designing a Magento theme, then send us the screenshot and if your design is the most voted you’ll win the contest. Then, our skilled developers will convert your design to a Magento theme and we’ll release it as a free theme for download.-

How to enter

To participate in the contest, your design must be an original design or a completely modified version of one of our existing themes. Contestants must include a design of a Magento Homepage (image format) and can optionally include a category page and/or product page (increasing your chances of winning).

Picking the winner

The Magento community will vote for the top 10 designs and voted by a jury of 5 Magento experts that will then decide the best design.

The winner must provide the PSD file after finishing the contest, for our developers to then start developing the theme.

Prize

Winners theme gets developed and released on HelloThemes exclusively.
The winners will get a badge (think of it like a trophy) which link back to the page stating the winners. Like all the awards, it’s all about glory and not so much about the money.
But, in recognition of effort and that’s if the glory isn’t enough … the 10 lucky finalists will get a free suscription for the HelloThemes Club. Is that enough? No? Ok, well then the winner will receive a brand new iPhone!!

The post New contest for designers! appeared first on Premium Magento Themes | HelloThemes | Templates.

HelloKimbo

_____________________________________

So finally its time to announce the results, here are the list of lucky winners:

• Chris Megahan
• iTokas Tomas
• Neil Mendez

Congratulations to the winners. All the winners will be contacted through email. The theme is already loaded into the member account of the winners and will be available until Dec 31^st. So winners, download your themes as soon as you receive the email.

Thanks to all for participating on the giveaway and a big congrats to all of the winners!

In case, If you missed this giveaway, make sure you are ready for next one as we going to create more such giveaways in future.
We have three cool ways to stay tuned: facebook, twitter and the HelloThemes blog

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