$this->_helper->flashMessenger();

First you need to register your view variable in init() method if you want to have notifications in all view files of your controller.

public function init()
{

/* Initialize action controller here*/
$this->view->messages = $this->_helper->flashMessenger->getMessages();

}

Then you simply add messages in your action methods like this:

$this->_helper->flashMessenger->addMessage(array("ok_message" => 'record deleted'));
or
$this->_helper->flashMessenger->addMessage(array("err_message" => 'unable to comply'));

Why wasting you code when you got all in one place, right?

Once you register the message notification all you need is to choose where message should appear.That’s the easy part, just need to style your div ids and classes in view files.

< ?php if(isset($this->messages)):?>
<div class="grid_12">
< ?php foreach($this->messages as $message):?>
<div id="site_info">
<div class="box">
< ?php if(isset($message["error"])):?>
<p>< ?php echo $message["error"]?></p>
< ?php elseif(isset($message["ok"])):?>
<p>< ?php echo $message["ok"]?></p>
< ?php endif?>
</div>
</div>
< ?php endforeach?>
</div>
< ?php endif?>

One trick, if you want to show them on all view pages, edit your layout file and paste the code above at header,footer or wherever you want them to be shown
(there is no need to put them in you view files, unless you want to show same notifications twice ).

The easiest way to have notifications in other modules is to register it like session variable and unset them manually.

Check class Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_FlashMessenger for additional purposes.
Enjoy coding.

In most of the cases, those developers edit footer.phtml in app/design/frontend/default/[your_theme]/template/page/html folder. As I said, the Google Analytics will track visitors data properly, but the main issue is that the eCommerce data will not be collected. To enable eCommerce data to be visible, first step is that you let Google Analytics to know that the profile is actually an E-Commerce site.

You will get to this interface by

1. Logging to Google Analytics
2. Select an account for this site
3. On the list of Account profiles, do not go to the reports, click on Edit instead
4. On the first box “Main Website Profile Information”, there is another Edit link to the right. Click on it.
5. One there, you will see the interface similar to the one on this image. Let Google Analytics know this is an eCommerce website
   

Although Google Analytics will tell you to embed the javascript code on your website, you don’t have to do that. You just need to see what is the Web Property ID of the profile. One you know it, go to the Magento administration to the interface: System> Configuration> Google API> Google Analytics. Enable it and insert that Web Property ID. Viola.

Forums say that older versions of Magento before 1.2 do not properly track eCommerce data. In case you have older version of Magento and have this issue, do not install some special plugins. Upgrade Magento instead.

As strange as this may sound, processor class that gets called is Mage_Core_Model_Email_Template_Filter located at app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Email/Template/Filter.php .

There are also some interesting directives in superclass Varien_Filter_Template, but if i’m not mistaken, none of them can be used.

There are six replacement codes  that can be used and each triggers its equivalent Directive function:

skinDirective
mediaDirective
htmlescapeDirective
storeDirective
blockDirective
layoutDirective

I’ll start with easier and most commonly used and continue with advanced ones in part two of this article.

1. skinDirective

Description: Used to retrieve path of skin folder and its files, theme fallback respected
Example: {{skin url=’images/image.jpg’ _theme=’blank’}}
Synonym: Mage::getDesign()->getSkinUrl($params['url'], $params)
Params:
url = empty or relative file path
_theme = alternative theme, fallbacks if file not exist
_package = alternative package
_area = alternative area(frontend,adminhtml)
_type, _default etc. = nothing useful, somebody please correct me if i’m wrong

2. mediaDirective

Description: Used to retrieve path of root/media folder and its files
Example: {{media url=’image.jpg’}}
Synonym: Mage::getBaseUrl(’media’) . $params['url']
Params:
url = empty or relative file path

3. htmlescapeDirective

Description: Used to escape special html chars
Example: {{htmlescape var=’<a href=”www.inchoo.net”>inchoo</a><b>inchoo</b><i>inchoo</i>’ allowed_tags=’b'}}
Synonym: Mage::helper(’core’)->htmlEscape($params['var'], $params['allowed_tags'])
Params:
var = string to escape
allowed_tags = comma-separated list of allowed tags

4. storeDirective

Description: Used to build magento routes and custom urls
Example: {{store url=’customer/account’ _query_a=’8′}}
Synonym: Mage::getUrl($params['url'], $params);
Params:
url = magento routers url
direct_url = normal url, appended to baseurl
_query_PARAMNAME = adds query param, for example _query_a=’8′ adds a=8 to url
_fragment = adds fragment, for example #comments
_escape = escapes “,’,<,>
custom = if using magento route url param, every custom param added will be appended like /a/8/b/10

I probably missed something in this last one, but it’s very late and i’m tired of poking through Magento

To be continued ..

1. Download FLIR from FLIR homepage. I was using latest 1.2 stable for this article because of simplicity, but if you try you’ll find out that 2.0 beta also works great but requires little more configuration.

2. Unpack FLIR content (cache,fonts,etc.) inside skin/frontend/default/default/facelift
I think it makes perfect sense to put it into skin folder.

3. Open app/design/frontend/yourpackage/yourtheme/template/page/html/head.phtml and append

<script language=”javascript” src=”<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl(’facelift/flir.js’) ?>”></script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>
document.observe(”dom:loaded”, function() {
FLIR.init({ path: ‘<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl(’facelift/’) ?>’ }, new FLIRStyle({ mode: ‘wrap’ }) );
FLIR.auto();
});
</script>

If your php error reporting isn’t disabled add error_reporting(0); somewhere on top of config-flir.php. This is main config file from which you can define options and custom fonts, so examine it.

Refresh your Magento store and you should see the result.

flir.js can also be alternatively included from layout files inside head block
<reference name=”head”>
<action method=”addItem”><type>skin_js</type><name>facelift/flir.js</name></action>
</reference>

There is nice Quick Start Guide and Documentation available from FLIR homepage, so i won’t go in details on some advanced FLIR settings, but here are few examples:

//pass selectors as comma separated list
FLIR.auto(’h5,h4′);
//pass an array of selectors
FLIR.auto( [ 'h4', 'h5' ] );
//replace manually with custom options
FLIR.replace( ‘div.box h4′ , new FLIRStyle({ mode: ‘wrap’ , css: {’font-family’:'arial’} }) );
//prototype way
$$(’div.box h4′).each( function(el) { FLIR.replace(el);  } );

Cya.

UIImage *myImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"me.png"];

UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(myImage, self, @selector(image:didFinishSavingWithError:contextInfo:), nil);

// And if you wish add this selector method in code;

- (void) image:(UIImage*)image didFinishSavingWithError:(NSError *)error contextInfo:(NSDictionary*)info;

That’s all you have to add! Quite simple, is it?

Performance:

As expected this is the fastest, most powerful and secure Firefox ever… For the next version of the web.

1. Faster rendering:

   Both static and dynamic pages are loaded noticeably faster. Javascript performance has also been improved thanks to TraceMonkey and Gecko layout engine (including speculative parsing for faster content rendering) .

2. JSON and Web worker threads:

Native JSON support enhances security, speed and by default demands less code to write;)
Check the it here.

3. Support for new technologies:

Ahhh the HTML 5. Firefox has it’s paws on the HTML 5 already with the <video> and <audio> elements; Downloadable fonts and more new CSS properties, JS query selectors. Improvement in networking with cross-site access controls for HTTP requests; Improvements in JavaScript 1.8.1;

4. Add-ons:One thing that’s often neglected when talking about the Firefox performance have also been improved and gained a speed boost. Now it’s up to the add-on developers to prepare their updates. Firebug is already updating thru the steady stream of betas
5. Private browsing mode:A feature most wanted when you don’t want to leave traces of the sites and pages you’ve been visiting.
6. Location-aware browsing:Setting up your browser by your current Geo location allows you to get more “local” related results. Thankfully this feature is totally optional. Try it at their site.

   

   

7. Video downloading:

   This should be great for everyone that now use one of many add-ons for video download if the likes of YouTube provide support for that feature.

8. Reopening recently closed windows and tabs:

   Although this feature is way familiar to the Safari users (like many new features in the new FF 3.5) it will be of great help for everyone closing that tab by accident. Found in the “History” menu.

9. Customizable skins:

   Now, this feature is definitely a not-must-have but a great asset to the marketing potential for the browser if only there was one theme usable enough . If you would like to skin your Fox do it here: Get personas.

Visual:

Firefox icon has also changed, the fox is more furry and the globe is noticeable shinier:

Firefox 3.0:

Firefox 3.5

Note:

Since at the time of writing this article Firefox 3.5 hasn’t been released yet the furrier Fox could mean that it’s not been combed yet, also

For the actual browser’s look and feel everything is pretty much the same although I could swear that they made the toolbars a bit more “tighter” looking and the new tab button is here just calling you to click on it and have another tab open:)

Those were the features I’ve considered to be most valuable for this release.

To summarize, Firefox 3.5 is now almost twice as fast, prepared for the HTML 5, has better networking, native JSON and Web worker threads, has private browsing mode and can locate you in a pretty much small radius . Oh, yeah, actual screenshots based on the Mac version of the ‘Fox.

If you haven’t already get it while it’s hot.

Thanks for reading.

Where does this urge for coffee originate from? What lies behind the infinite lines of Magento code that makes our developers overdose themselves with this dark liquid?

The need for coffee probably predates their employment in this company. It probably originates from the time they use to be freelancers, often having to pull-the-all-nighters. In such a environment, coffee is not an option, it’s a requirement, a tool that makes the job possible. Over time, developers probably developed some sort of addiction to coffee.

I once saw a great line, so I’ll quote it:

A web developer is an organism that turns coffee into lines of code.

Why do you drink so much coffee? What kind of coffee do you prefer?

How many times have you scribbled some important note on the closest post-it you could find only to lose sight of it the very next day (or minute, for that matter)? Please raise your hand if you’ve at least once missed out on that follow-up email to a prospect weeks after sending your quote? It looks like we’re voting on something, right? Well, not any more.

Since I joined the team, I’ve had the privilege to use Highrise – a great contact management tool from 37signals which helps me keep track of the entire client communication process with ease. Let’s say I’ve just received an email inquiry from a new prospect. When sending a response, I can instantly Bcc the email to my Highrise dropbox making the communication transparent and easily trackable for myself and, most importantly, for the rest of the team as well.

I’m able to upload and/or import basic contact information about the new client together with her/his picture (sometimes being good with the names simply doesn’t cut it), corporate information, other notes and – yes – even feed the profile with their Twitter updates so I can see what the client is up to in real time.

While some of these features can strike you as purely cosmetic, there are others that really stand out. I can create task lists for each contact (making sure I don’t forget sending that quote or a follow-up email), add pending and any previous deals to them and tag them accordingly.

It happened a couple of times that I’d make a follow-up on a prospect who needed some small Magento tweak a month ago and decided to go with another developer. He had experienced some problems and was very much relieved to hear back from us and ask for our help with a larger deal that we would then land. Who knows if I’d have remembered to make that follow-up had I not created a task two months ago.

Highrise will send out reminders to your email address with daily tasklist and it will let you know without hesitation once some of your tasks are overdue. There’s also a whole bunch of extras and add-ons available so you can really tailor it to your needs.

Of course, there’s no tool in the world that would do everything for you (well, not yet, unfortunately), I still need to set my own tasks, make the callbacks and send out those quotes. However, now it’s all safely in one place and for everyone in my team to see and, if need be, jump in and follow up easily if I’m unavailable.

Plus, it’s environmentally friendly, no more post-its for me so I’ve saved a couple of trees in the process.

There is a similarity between entrepreneur online store owner and strategy game player, but with some differences.

Online Store Owner:

• has no Save/Load option
• takes much greater risk
• will not conquer the world

The rest is similar. You have to know how to use your resources, how to expand and how to fight. Experienced games will tell that most of the games are won at the start. With a good start, later battles turn to be much easier.

There was one client I worked with in the past in CRE Loaded days. He was starting his eCommerce enterprise, had a good products and was searching for development team. First meeting was great when he presented his business idea. After development started, it was obvious that the client did not want to listen no one but himself. He wanted totally non-standard navigation because “it was very important for his business”, unique shopping basket interface because “it was very important for his business”, unique checkout process because “it was very important for his business”.

After few months of agony and constand suggestions from our side not to rape things that shouldn’t be raped, the store was launced.

He was shocked how little visitors he attracted and struggled to get 1-2 weekly purchases. The ambition was much higher. This store owner did not put his energy to think about his products and visitors. He put all his energy to think of the ways how to make his online store behave differently.

Online store owners, start with something simple. Online store functionality will not boost your income of other components of marketing mix are not good.

As Branko said in one post, “Get serious, focus on what matters the most“.

I’m actually trying to merge something like this with default zoom, but i’m not finished yet. Anyway, i left all javascript and styling in media.phtml file, so just download the file

media.phtml.rar

and replace it with your own at
app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/catalog/product/view/media.phtml

It was made with default Magento theme. Enjoy.

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView*)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest*)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType {

if(navigationType == UIWebViewNavigationTypeLinkClicked) {

if (overrideLinksSwitch.on == TRUE) {

[self myMethodAction];

[myWebView stopLoading];

return YES;
}

else {
return YES;
}
}

return YES;
}

You can download example app here.

After two attempts, Branko opened the door. First thing I noticed was a Magento circle on his forehead and a red eyes.  Branko didn’t sleep for a very long time.

“Branko, are you ok?“, I asked.

“Yes, Why? What’s going on? What date it is?”

You could feel the smell of burning plastic in the air. It was obvious that computer was turned on for a long time.  I glanced in the room and I could see the monitor with Magento colored light and some animations on it.

“What are you working on man?”

He just stared for a couple of seconds which seemed like an eternity and than he finally spoke…

… To be Continued …

http://amfpoint.com

magento philosophy is to create block class under the /Block folder of your module, to create xml layout file under the theme /layouts folder (or to modify existing layout file) and so on. Anyway you turn it around you either need to have Block file or add/modify at least the entry to the layout files.

All this is OK if you are working on your own store so you have full control over the code. However, what if you are developing a module that will be used on different Magento stores. My prime concern when building a module is to keep the number of necessary module files to a minimum.

In code below, you will see how easy it is to call your Core/Template block to show on any area of Magento layout.

Extracted from app/code/local/ActiveCodeline/CustomOutputs/controllers/IndexController.php file.

public function indexAction()
{
//Get current layout state
$this->loadLayout();

$block = $this->getLayout()->createBlock(
'Mage_Core_Block_Template',
'my_block_name_here',
array('template' => 'activecodeline/developer.phtml')
);

$this->getLayout()->getBlock('content')->append($block);

//Release layout stream... lol... sounds fancy
$this->renderLayout();
}

Most IMPORTANT thing to keep in mind here is the “error handling”. If you assign a “invalid” block to ->append(), you will not (most likely) see an error but “nothing happend” situation.

Anyhow… hope the attached module (extension) will save you some headaches. I know it took me few hours of tracing and testing to get the grip of it.

Download ActiveCodeline_CustomOutputs extension.

Cheers.

About bing:

As a major search engine, bing respects most of the rules we’re already used to following when optimizing for other major search engines (Google & Yahoo!). However, there are significant differences in search results and it’s plain easy to see that algorithms of Google and bing differ a lot.

I have took new Microsoft’s search engine on a intensive test run and have it set-up as my homepage for some time now. I really like bing’s localization and how it actually targeted the international market pretty well. Results localized by country are pretty good (it’s not Google, but hey, give them some time ) and relevant. Yahoo for example is as useful in localized search as yesterday’s newspapers when searching for fresh news. This is why Google is a major leader in international search engine market and now, bing has got a chance to change this.

We’ve also seen a nice income of traffic from bing while Google Analytics still doesn’t recognize bing as a search engine at all. Our search engine rankings positions are in most cases much higher on Google, but that’s mostly because of difference in bing’s and Google’s algorithms and the fact we’ve been optimizing ourselves for Google since the time our site first came out.

About bing SEO:

According to the recent studies you probably can’t really optimize your website for Bing specifically. You can optimize it for major search engines and Bing will be just fine with it.

Most of the studies that were taken in this small amount of time show that:

• There is no difference in on-site optimization between Google and Bing. There might be some differences in how much importance these search engines give to various on-site ranking factors (title, h1, h2, h3, alt tags, meta data etc.).
• It appears that Bing gives more importance to the title tag then other major search engines.
• Bing seems to value the domain age factor a lot.
• Bing seems to like backlinks even more then Google does.

Bing vs Google:

Some additional information about search engine optimizing bing can be found here.  Also some good ideas can be seen in this post.

For instance, if I were to tell you that I want you to retrieve 5 simple products from database that have price in the range of 200-600USD you would most likely spent 1-4 hours trying to work out the query. In the end you would be lucky if you even get the query that wont break on next Magento upgrade. Let me just remind you on some of the things you need to be careful in example above.

Your query would have to take in consideration the at least the following states: is my product visibility such that it can be seen in Catalog and search result, is my product enabled or disabled, is is out of stock, which website and store view has it been assigned, is it assigned to only one category and that category is disabled by some chance, does it have special price assigned, does it have promotion rules assigned, does it have content (descriptions) for multilingual site assigned.

All of those and more are questions that one has to take into consideration when doing raw database queries. It makes no sense to create query that fetches product and all its appropriate info (price, quantity, description…) if that product is disabled or assigned to category that is disabled. For instance, if you need “featured” product functionality and you manually create raw query that extracts one “featured” product to lets say home page. There you create nice block holding all the necessary info of the product with a link for lets say “Add to cart” or “View product”. Clicking one of those two link would give you most likely 404 if the product is disable or any other condition that enables the product to be shown is disabled.

So basically, raw SQL queries in Magento are a “no no” for most of the time. Too much work and you never know what they will change in future upgrades. Which brings me to this new trend of theirs which I like to call “Escape from EAV”.

EAV, also know as Entity Attribute Value was suppose to bee (or is) the next big thing in OOP. Anyhow, Magento and his way of EAV have two huge downfalls called LACK OF DOCUMENTATION and WHAT WILL THEY CHANGE IN NEXT UPGRADE. The other day I was working on a Magento shop that had 22 000 products. Almost all of them were simple products, just about 600 were grouped. The store was initially installed on Magento 1.2 version. Site was pretty much 95% complete from both graphic and development perspective. Anyhow, Magento version 1.3.1 was released and on client demand we decide to to upgrade. Important thing to keep in mind is that in version 1.3 Magento introduce “change in philosophy” concerning the EAV model.

Altough EAV sounds great (and really is great for most of the time), it can really slow things down with all those JOINS executed on database. So the Magento team decided to do a little flat tabling. Basically we now have massive data duplication in MySQL where data is taken from various tables and copied int one, the flat table. Flat tables were introduced for both Products and categories, in regards to various website and store views.

Basically Magento has the power to “on the fly” create tables and do the “magical” copying of data from various tables to the flat tables. I assume they were looking for a faster way to “assemble” Product objects in Magento which in turn should boost the speed of collection object i grew so found about. I can live with duplicated data in database, I mean I am not the one writing them down. But let me get back to real world scenario.

As I mentioned, store I have been working on had more than 20 000 products. Due to limitations of both MySQL and PHP failed to do Rebuilt that you can find in System > Configuration > Cache management. This failure caused corrupted data in database. This manifested with “empty” attributes (attributes not showing up in Layered navigation). I resolved the issue by “re saving” all of the 20 000 product with custom script I wrote. After that i noticed the data in flat tables got rebuild as well. This of course took several hours. Magento EAV model seems OK on paper, but with store that hold’s large number of products it simply does not work, at least not in way in which their collection objects are built. Changes introduced in form of flat tables in versions 1.3 should, to some extent, improve work with stores that have large numbers of products. However this improvement seems to come in form of “copy all data from scattered tables to single flat table”.

Solutions like these are nightmare when it comes to upgrading the store that already has large number of products in. System is expected to handle part of the job transparently but it failed, leaving the client with corrupted database.

So, a word of advice for upgrading an existing Magento store: NEVER do it on live site. Let professional developer transfer live site and database to his dev machine, or make a copy on some sub folder on live site. Magento’s extreme out of the box feature rich capabilities, open source philosophy and good marketing have made it extremely popular but be careful, free is such a a loose term.

I am really anxious to see the future path of EAV vs Flat model in Magento.

That’s quite easy to achieve with following steps, however I can’t write complete tutorial here so
you should be a little more familiar with Magento in order to make it work.

First open file app/design/frontend/YOUR_INTERFACE/YOUR_THEME/template/checkout/cart/item/default.phtml
Find line with this code:

< ?php if ($_options = $this->getOptionList()):?>

[*]
Bellow that line put this code:

< ?php
if($this->getProduct()->isConfigurable()){
$_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($this->getProduct()->getId());
Mage::getBlockSingleton('catalog/product_view_type_configurable')->unsetData();
$_configurable = Mage::getBlockSingleton('catalog/product_view_type_configurable')->setData('product', $_product);
$_cdata = json_decode($_configurable->getJsonConfig());
$_current = array();
foreach((array)$this->getOptionList() as $_option) {
$_current[$_option['label']]=$_option['value'];
}
foreach($_cdata->attributes as $attribute) {
?>
<strong>< ?php echo $attribute->label; ?></strong>
<select style="width:150px;" name="cart[<?php echo $_item->getId() ?>][option][< ?php echo $attribute->id ?>]">
< ?php
foreach($attribute->options as $option) {
?>
<option <?php echo ($_current[$attribute->label]==$option->label) ? ' selected' : '' ?> value="< ?php echo $option->id ?>">< ?php echo $option->label ?> < ?php echo $this->helper('checkout')->formatPrice($option->price+$_item->getProduct()->getPrice()) ?></option>
< ?php
}
?>
</select>
< ?php
}
} else {
// THIS IS PLACE WHERE EXISTING CODE from [*] goes
}
?>

Now you are done with template and you can style it as you wish as soon as you do few additional steps.

Next thing you should do is:

Inside app/code/local/ create directory YOUR_FIRM/MODULE_NAME/ and there you make directories “Model” and “etc”.

Create these files there:
config.xml inside “etc” that contains following:

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<frontend>
<events>
<checkout_cart_update_items_before>
<observers>
<your_firm_module_name_event>
<type>singleton</type>
<class>YOUR_FIRM_MODULE_NAME_Model_Card</class>
<method>update</method>
</your_firm_module_name_event>
</observers>
</checkout_cart_update_items_before>
</events>
</frontend>
</config>

and

Card.php inside “Model” that contains following:

< ?php

class YOUR_FIRM_MODULE_NAME_Model_Card
{
public function update($e)
{
$_this = $e->cart;
$data = $e->info;

foreach ($data as $itemId => $itemInfo) {
$item = $_this->getQuote()->getItemById($itemId);

if (!$item) continue;
if (!isset($itemInfo['option']) or empty($itemInfo['option'])) continue;

foreach ($item->getOptions() as $option){

if($option->getCode()=='info_buyRequest'){

$unserialized = unserialize($option->getValue());
$unserialized['super_attribute'] = $itemInfo['option'];
$option->setValue(serialize($itemInfo['option']));

}elseif ($option->getCode()=='attributes'){
$option->setValue(serialize($itemInfo['option']));
}

}
$item->save();
}
}

}
?>

Ok, now just create file YOUR_FIRM_MODULE_NAME.xml inside app/etc/
and put this inside:

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<your_firm_module_name>
<codepool>local</codepool>
<active>true</active>
</your_firm_module_name>
</modules>
</config>

That’s about it Enjoy!

P.S. Yes, I know… before clicking on update cart, we should have some JavaScript price changer, but this is all I have at this moment since I needed this on card that is autosubmited on dropdown change.

Twitter is a social network before all and there are lots of different people on it with different interests. It’s not really important how many followers you have, it’s all about who your followers are.

Let’s say you sell products to interior designers, like our client Pebble Hill Designs does. It would be more important for you to have hundreds of interior designers as your twitter followers then thousands of random folks.

It’s pretty simple math, if your followers are people that are really interested into your services / products, you are more likely to convert them into customers and they are also more likely to retweet your messages and engage you into discussions.

Getting targeted followers on twitter basically starts as any other marketing activity:

1. Define your targeted audience and do some research on them. Find out who are the most influential twitter users among your targeted audience, have a look on what they tweet about and why do people follow them.

2. Use twitter search to find conversations about your niche, services or products. Don’t just search one hashtag and think you’re done. Be creative, try to find any natural order of words that would be used in discussions about your services, products or your general niche.

3. Engage your targeted audience into conversations. This is what social media is all about, conversations. If you manage to give quality info and answer questions about services or products that you also offer, your reputation will grow with time and so will your follower base.

4. Don’t spamm, mass follow, and don’t try to sell your products / services all the time. People don’t like to be sold to. If someone is asking to be recommended a service provider, offer your services, however, don’t just send out spamm to anyone that fits the profile of your targeted audience.

5. Follow the most influential twitter users in your targeted niche and pay extra attention to them. Try to engage them into communication as much as possible. If they communicate with you a lot, you will eventually get lots of followers from them.

6. Use the hashtags in your tweets. It will make your tweets more visible in twitter search and you might get some nice quality targeted followers this way. Once again, don’t abuse these tags, only use them when it’s obvious they fit the context of your tweet.

7. Be active in twitter’s social events such as #FollowFriday. You have to give in order to receive. Hashtag users you find interesting or influential with #FollowFriday tag every Friday and you might be lucky to receive some reciprocal Friday love. This is one of the best ways to get quality and relevant followers on your Twitter account.

8. Join in twitter directories under appropriate category (hashtag). One of the best known twitter directories is WeFollow.

If you liked this article, you can follow Inchoo via twitter. Thanks!

I cant wait for smart comments like, “few hours, huh its so easy…”. Yea, thats the beauty of Magento… few hours of bashing your head against the wall while you are sipping the 4th cup of coffee until the solution hits you. Interesting do, just when you get the hang of it, Magento gets you this “have you tried this” attitude .

What am I talking about? Scenario: I want to create email template named activecodeline_custom_email1.html, I want to pass few variables to it during runtime, I want to send emails programmaticaly. I dont want to create 56 lines of xml file just to call one template.

Here is how.

...
/*
 * Loads the html file named 'custom_email_template1.html' from
 * app/locale/en_US/template/email/activecodeline_custom_email1.html
 */
$emailTemplate  = Mage::getModel('core/email_template')
						->loadDefault('custom_email_template1');									

//Create an array of variables to assign to template
$emailTemplateVariables = array();
$emailTemplateVariables['myvar1'] = 'Branko';
$emailTemplateVariables['myvar2'] = 'Ajzele';
$emailTemplateVariables['myvar3'] = 'ActiveCodeline';

/**
 * The best part 
 * Opens the activecodeline_custom_email1.html, throws in the variable array
 * and returns the 'parsed' content that you can use as body of email
 */
$processedTemplate = $emailTemplate->getProcessedTemplate($emailTemplateVariables);

/*
 * Or you can send the email directly,
 * note getProcessedTemplate is called inside send()
 */
$emailTemplate->send('john@someemail.com','John Doe', $emailTemplateVariables);
...

And here we go again, nothing without xml files -In order for above piece of code to work, you need to add an entry to your config.xml file like shown below.

...
<global>
	<template>
		<email>
			<custom_email_template1 module="SampleModule1">
				<label>ActiveCodeline custom email module</label>
				<file>activecodeline_custom_email1.html</file>
				<type>html</type>
			</custom_email_template1>
		</email>
	</template>
</global>
...

And lets not forget the email template itself, app/locale/en_US/template/email/activecodeline_custom_email1.html.

<!--@subject ActiveCodeline custom email module @-->

<div>
<h1>ActiveCodeline custom email example by Branko Ajzele</h1>
<p>Hi there {{var myvar1}} {{var myvar2}} from {{var myvar3}}. This is just some example template to test custom email module.</p>
</div>

Hope this was helpful. Cheers.

As you can see on the picture below, I am creating a menu item with title “ActiveCodeline_SampleModule1″.

My module is called “SampleModule1″ and it consists of just a few files. As you go over the provided config.xml file you will see that I used “BigLettersSmallLetters” style. I do this intentionally because this “naming convention” is another great pitfall for developers when it comes to constructing xml files. I know I too still struggle with “what must be the lowercase” question.

Here is my example of config.xml file

< ?xml version="1.0"?>

<config>
    <modules>
        <activecodeline_samplemodule1>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </activecodeline_samplemodule1>
    </modules>

<global>
        <helpers>
            <samplemodule1>
                <class>ActiveCodeline_SampleModule1_Helper</class>
            </samplemodule1>
        </helpers>
</global>        

        <admin>
        <routers>
            <samplemodule1>
                <use>admin</use>
                <args>
                    <module>ActiveCodeline_SampleModule1</module>
                    <frontname>samplemodule1</frontname>
                </args>
            </samplemodule1>
        </routers>
    </admin>

    <adminhtml>
        <menu>
            <menu1 translate="title" module="SampleModule1">
                <title>ActiveCodeline SampleModule1</title>
                <sort_order>60</sort_order>
                <children>
                    <menuitem1 module="SampleModule1">
                        <title>Menu item 1</title>
                        <action>samplemodule1/example</action>
                    </menuitem1>
                </children>
            </menu1>
        </menu>
        <acl>
            <resources>
                <admin>
                    <children>
                        <menu1 translate="title" module="SampleModule1">
							<title>ActiveCodeline SampleModule1</title>
                			<sort_order>60</sort_order>
                            <children>
                                <menuitem1>
                                    <title>Menu item 1</title>
                                </menuitem1>
                            </children>
                       </menu1>
                   </children>
               </admin>
           </resources>
        </acl>
    </adminhtml>    

</config>

My “admin” controller is extremely simple, just an indexAction() method. However it does tell a lot. Below is a code of indexAction() method.

...
public function indexAction()
{
	// "Fetch" display
    $this->loadLayout();

    // "Inject" into display
    // THe below example will not actualy show anything since the core/template is empty
    $this->_addContent($this->getLayout()->createBlock('core/template'));

    // echo "Hello developer...";

    // "Output" display
    $this->renderLayout();
}
...

And below are all the files required for this “Admin example module” to work.

Download Admin example module aka SampleModule1

Note this is only example, DO NOT USE on live site.

Cheers…

So, where to we start?

The idea is to have special Url which will act as AMF endpoint. Since Magento is built on top of Zend, this is extremely easy to do.

For your module to act as a basic AMF server you need only 3 files. MyCompany_MyModule.xml that goes under the /app/etc/modules/ folder. Then IndexController.php that goes under the /app/code/local/MyCompany/MyModule/controllers/IndexController.php. And last but not least the config.xml file that goes under the /app/code/local/MyCompany/MyModule/etc/ folder.

I will not go into the details and show you the full content of each of those files. Important thing is to focus on IndexController.php and config.xml files. Inside your IndexController.php file you will actualy hold the code for your AMF server (Zend_Amf).

Here is an example of indexAction from my IndexController.php file:

...
public function indexAction()
{
	//Create AMF server instance
	$server = new Zend_Amf_Server();

	//setProduction(false): return exception info
	$server->setProduction(false);

	$server->setClass($class, $class);

	//$server->setClassMap("SomeTypedObjectVO", "MyCompany_MyModule_Model_SomeTypedObjectVO");
	$server->setClassMap($className, $class);

	//Run the AMF server
	echo $server->handle();

	//Just in case so that Magento does not pass anything beyond this point
	die;
}
...

The above example is the simplest form of Zend AMF server i can think of, but it should be enough to get your AMF server responsive to AMF requests.

And to make all of this accessible via Url, we need to add entry to congig.xml file. Below is the partial example of my config.xml file.

...
	<frontend>
		<routers>
			<mymodule>
				<use>standard</use>
				<args>
				<module>MyCompany_MyModule</module>
				<frontname>myamfserver</frontname>
			</args>
			</mymodule>
		</routers>
	</frontend>
...

Above piece of code sets access to AMF server on Url like http://server/store/index.php/myamfserver.

Thats it.