If you want an easy way to add and manage todo lists templates for your projects (if they tend to have the same type of checklists - such as website pre-launch checklists), then this script is for you. It’s a simple method of maintaining todo list templates, and adding them to any of the projects in your Basecamp account, with ease.

What you do is simply create a new project specifically for keeping your todo lists under your company in Basecamp. You then supply the script with that project id, and your Basecamp login information, and you are set to go. Simply add some todo lists and items, then navigate to the script on your server, and it is dynamically populated for you.

You can check out the details by clicking the link above in the page navigation or click the following to read more details and download the Basecamp Todo List Template script.

If you have any questions, or if you have any feature requests, please post a comment. I hope you will find it a useful tool!

This is a more difficult post to title - but I think that should do it. Here was my need today: We’ve got some navigational links in the header, and there are two categories “Sale Items” and “Internet Only” that should show up as links ONLY if there are products in those categories - otherwise, they shouldn’t be there (no need to have a link to a category with no products in it).

The Solution

There’s a quick’n'easy code line that you can pass in a category id to, and it will return how many products are in that category:

Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(198)->getProductCount()

So - I got the category IDs from the admin and I created the following code to check the count - and display the link only if there are products in that category:

<?php
    $sale_count = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(198)->getProductCount();
    if ($sale_count > 0) : ?>
        <li class="sale"><a href="/sale/">Sale Items</a></li>
<?php
    endif;
    $internet_count = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(200)->getProductCount();
    if ($internet_count > 0) : ?>
        <li class="internet"><a href="/internet-only/">Internet Only</a></li>
<?php
    endif;
?>

Hopefully you can find that useful if you need it!

When I saw that WordPress 2.7 released yesterday (Dec. 11th), I didn’t really think much of it. After all - I don’t have any complaints about what WordPress is doing for me now. However, I decided to take the couple minutes to check out the video that they posted about it and I quickly realized how stupid I would be if I didn’t upgrade!

I’m still exploring all the new features and I’m still in awe at the new user interface, but it is truly amazing. Check out the video for yourself! No need for me to list all the new features - the video does a fine job:

We actually forgot to do this with one of our sites - but when developing, we obviously had cache fully disabled. When you go to launch, there are so many other things you are thinking about that it is easy to forget to enable all the cache again.

So, as a reminder to all of you that have launched Magento sites, turn back on the cache if you haven’t yet! It will definitely speed up the performance of the site.

I was able to get in contact with a developer from 37 Signals over the weekend. I ran into some troubles finding a solid way to process the responses when you post, get, or put data to/from the Basecamp API. Turns out, the documentation is out-dated, and there are some known inconsistencies.

So - now knowing some crucial information “from the horse’s mouth”, I know now how to properly process the responses. This will be implemented in version 1.2. I’ll keep you posted!

Version 1.1 is now released. Please check out the Basecamp PHP Class page for new documentation and download information.

There were a lot of changes, new methods (including file attachments), and bug fixes in 1.1. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I like to get it out into the user’s hands for feedback and bug-tracking. If you are noticing something that isn’t working, or is glitchy, first check the method documentation within the class itself to make sure you are using it correction, then if it still isn’t working right - please let me know! (Post a comment here).

I may have easily incorrectly documented something, or forgot to make changes. I ran out of time this evening and had to rush through it. So, please keep that in mind!

I am very open to making quick changes/fixes and releases. One of the best ways to contact me is through AIM (”creativearcjosh”). Feel free to hop on and ask questions or make suggestions if I’m online.

I want to make this PHP class good, and solid. So - I love the feedback and suggestions. Keep them coming!

I discovered something great the other day, and I figured I would pass it along for any of you that don’t know about it. YouTube is loaded with music. You can usually find the song you are looking for. So, instead of buying music to listen to at home or work, you can create playlists in YouTube if you have created an account.

When you have created a playlist, you can then to go your playlists, select one, and click “Play All”, and it will cycle through the entire playlist without you having to touch anything. So, open up a new tab in your browser, create a playlist, add a bunch of songs to it, click “Play All”, and you’ll have some nice listening without touching a thing!

Just found out a really quick and easy way to figure out which Magento PHP Class is responsible for putting together everything that is needed for any given template. It’s as easy as dropping in one simple line of code. Just place the following into any .phtml template files:

<?php echo 'This Template\'s Class: '.get_class($this); ?>

After finally figuring out the Magento API, I figured I’d start first with creating a simple category importer. So, if you have a Magento site out on the web and you want to try it out, please have at it! It requires that you create a web services user on your Magento installation, and you have to host your own CSV.

Just follow the CSV format that I laid out, and you’ll be ready to import. Remember though, this hasn’t been tested very much. I’ve done tests here and it seems to be working great. It does have it’s limitations. You have to provide the CSV with the name of the parent category that you want the imported category to fall under. If you have multiple categories with the same name, the importer will not work properly yet. It does, however, refresh the category tree ever time a category is imported, allowing you to give parent categories that you just imported in the CSV.

So, please try it out, let me know of any bugs you find, or any ideas for improvement. I put a Paypal donation link on the import page - if you wish to show your appreciation, or give towards helping me improve it.

Enough talk - Magento Category Importer.

I started trying to learn Magento’s API today, which requires the use of SOAP. I know that SOAP is a part of PHP5, however, I guess it doesn’t often come enabled on a lot of servers. I have a DV with Media Temple, and after running phpinfo(), I saw that SOAP definitely wasn’t configured.

The following instructions will guide you through adding the SOAP to your previous installation of PHP. In my case, I had PHP 5.2.6 installed, so - note that when you are downloading the PHP source files - you should probably try and stick with the version you currently have.

Install Media Temple’s Developer Tools

You will need the developer tools installed to compile PHP. So, login to your Media Temple account center, select your primary domain, find the “Root Access & Developer Tools”. Install the developer tools if you haven’t already. It may take up to 5-10 minutes, so be patient.

Make sure you have enabled root access as well, as you will need this to be able to compile the PHP

Download & Compile PHP

Open your terminal, and ssh into your server using root.

1. Navigate to a relatively unimportant directory. I chose /home/
   cd /home/
2. Download PHP
   wget http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.6.tar.gz/from/us.php.net/mirror
3. Unpack the PHP file
   tar -zxf php-5.2.6.tar.gz
4. Configure the new PHP to enable SOAP (will take a few minutes) (before enable is two dashes)
   cd php-5.2.6
./configure –enable-soap=shared
5. Rebuild PHP (this will also take a while)
   make
6. Copy just the SOAP module into your existing installation of PHP
   cp modules/soap.so /usr/lib/php/modules/
7. Add the new SOAP configuration to your existing configuration
   echo "extension=soap.so" > /etc/php.d/soap.ini
8. Restart Apache
   /etc/init.d/httpd restart
9. Optional: You can now delete /home/php-5.2.6/ if you’d like, as you won’t need it any longer.
   rm -rf /home/php-5.2.6/
10. Check phpinfo() to confirm that SOAP is now enabled.

 

This should not effect Media Temple’s update option program, in the case where you would like to up update your server later on.

Special thanks to dotjay for initially pointing this all out.