Nick Says

Magento $this

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:05:05 +0000

The infamous $this found in Magento templates is a concept that I’ve found baffles beginner Magento developers. Here’s to hoping I can provide a half-decent explanation as to what it is, and where it comes from. The most important point …

A Company while at University

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:00:24 +0000

Jack Franklin asked if I could give a short presentation on what exactly a Web Developer is and the trials and tribulations associated with running a company while at University for the BCSS last week. I think it went alright.. …

Dissecting the Magento Cron System

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:06:43 +0000

Magento has a really neat cron system that lets developers run scheduled jobs at defined intervals, much like the cron service found on most Unix-like systems. I wrote a post a over two years ago covering how to use the …

Merging Magento Installations

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:30:04 +0000

So we took on a project to redesign a current Magento store. We developed the new site, in isolation from the previous store, on a fresh Magento installation. When it came to launching we needed to merge the customer and …

Working with LeJOS on Mac OSX

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 09:21:11 +0000

I've been having trouble getting LeJOS, with USB and Bluetooth magic, set up on my Mac OS X. Here's how to do it.

FreeAgent Integration with Geckoboard

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:13:04 +0000

So we’ve started using Geckoboard at Meanbee to give us a heads up of where we are with regards to the traffic on our various sites and goal conversions in Google Analytics, specifically our new Magento Theme Framework. As with …

Article Live: Introduction to Magento Themes

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:19:04 +0000

My article on SitePoint is now live! Let me know if there are any problems or typos.

Proper Magento Class Overrides

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:51:36 +0000

Magento has a system that allows a developer to easily override a core class by introducing a rewrite into the module's XML configuration. Unless this is used correctly we can run into some major problems down the road.

Magento 1.4.1.1 Events Cheat Sheet

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:25:26 +0000

I’ve updated the events cheat sheet for Magento version 1.4.1.1.

Custom Magento Module Log

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:31:17 +0000

PHP errors and messages from other modules can clutter up your tail -f when debugging, and sometimes it’s just nice to have separate logs to the main system. Set up your own log adapter with: $my_log = Mage::getModel('core/log_adapter', 'my_module.log'); and …