While creating a Role and giving access to the Catalog section I noticed that the Role Resources were never updating, no matter if I gave full or custom permissions. The version of Magento was 1.6.2 (latest at the time of development). There is apparently a bug with the code that affects 1.6.X versions of Magento Community Edition (CE).

The fix is fairly simple and requires a small code adjustment on the core code. Generally, it’s best to copy over the core code you are editing to a local version as your edits will get overwritten if you update the core code. But, since we know that this has been patched in 1.7, it’s best to let Magento overwrite it when we do upgrade.

Below is the code edit. Inside app/code/core/Mage/AdminHtml/Block/Api/Tab/RolesEdit.php we will look inside the constructor for a function call to getPermission.

The old line of code should be
if (array_key_exists(strtolower($item->getResource_id()), $resources) && $item->getPermission() == 'allow')

The new line of code should be
if (array_key_exists(strtolower($item->getResource_id()), $resources) && $item->getApiPermission() == 'allow')

Hopefully this fixed the issue for others running 1.6.X and not being able to edit an API User’s Role Resouces.

Download the zip file.

The schedule shows a wide variety of topics being discussed for designers and developers as well as marketing topics. I will be speaking on custom post types for WordPress and demonstrating how to develop a plugin using custom post types. If you’re unfamiliar with custom post types, they are great addition to WordPress. They allow you to create new types of posts that can be used for events, faqs, products, a portfolio. I hope to soon release a new FAQ plugin on WordPress that will be completely based off of the new custom post types.

To get a better understanding of Custom Posts Types you can read the WordPress Codex page on Post Types. I hope to see you WordCamp Columbus!

There are several ways to get the two applications to talk to each other. I’ll go over a way to integrate both Magento into WordPress and WordPress into Magento. This way you can leverage the awesome CMS capabilities of WordPress and the powerful ecommerce Magento.

Magento into WordPress

My favorite route of getting Magento related content on a WordPress page/post is to use the plugin called Mage Enabler by Richard Feraro. It’s pretty easy to setup for an experienced developer. You just give the absolute local path to the Mage.php file in the Mage Enabler settings and then copy the ‘/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/functions.php’ to the ‘/magento/app/code/local/Mage/Core/functions.php’ and adjust the translator function that both Magento and WordPress share. You can go to the Plugin page for more info.

The great thing about this plugin is you can bring into your WordPress install any session, cookies or variables that were previously exclusive to Magento. This way you can pull in the mini shipping cart that will carry over the number of items in the cart on the WordPress pages. A great feature to have!

WordPress into Magento

The other way to integrate is to get your WordPress content and variables onto your Magento pages. I’ve seen several different approaches to this, but I’m going to stick with my favorite way, because its the easiest, fastest and doesn’t require a ton of steps like some of the others do.

If you’re already using the Mage Enabler plugin, this is only a 1 step setup!
Navigate to your index.php file in your Magento installation. We are going to add 2 lines of code. 1 will say we’re not using WP_THEMES and the 2nd will require the wp_load.php file that way we can use the WordPress functions.

define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require_once('/home/username/public_html/media/wp-load.php');

I have my WordPress installed in the media folder, so i referenced that. The second step is to edit the __() function so that it’s only declared once.

if (!function_exists('__')) {
function __() {
return Mage::app()->getTranslator()->translate(func_get_args());
}
}

Conclusion

And there you have it! 2 great ways to combine the power of both WordPress and Magento. This really just breaks the shell of what we can do with the two married together.

So, instead of going into each simple product individually, I quickly went to the Magento Community forum and tried to find an answer.

The Magento Wiki has a great article on how to use the Magento API to update all of the SKUs. They have also updated the article on how to use the Magento Models (much quicker than the API) to do the exact same thing, which is what we chose to use.

To use their script, simply create a csv file with two items per line with the old SKU and new SKU separated by a comma. The script will iterate through each product and update its SKU. Pretty simple and a huge time saver! Below is the code.

<?php
include_once '../app/Mage.php';
Mage::app();
 
$updates_file="/home/public_html/xxx/var/export/sku2sku.csv";
 
$sku_entry=array();
 
$updates_handle=fopen($updates_file, 'r');
if($updates_handle) { 
    while($sku_entry=fgetcsv($updates_handle, 1000, ",")) { 
        $old_sku=$sku_entry[0];
        $new_sku=$sku_entry[1];
        echo "<br>Updating ".$old_sku." to ".$new_sku." - ";
        try {
            $get_item = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->loadByAttribute('sku', $old_sku);
            if ($get_item) {
                $get_item->setSku($new_sku)->save();
                echo "successful";
            } else {
                echo "item not found";
            }
        } catch (Exception $e) { 
            echo "Cannot retrieve products from Magento: ".$e->getMessage()."<br>";
            return;
        }
    }
}
 
fclose($updates_handle);

Head over to the Magento Wiki Article for more information.

A fix to this problem is actually very simple, or it at least it was for our two clients.

Navigate to System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Mail sending settings > Set return path > YES

That fixed our problem with system emails like registration, order notification and password recovery not getting to the customer.

We created a very simple plugin that allows the administrator to edit the footer text that shows in the lower left corner of the WordPress Admin pages. You can download the plugin from our server. Once downloaded, you can just upload the folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ folder on your webserver. Activate the plugin from the Plugins Admin in your WordPress installation and then navigate to Settings -> nuAdmin Footer and add whatever footer message you would like. If you install it, let us know how you like it and what other things you would like added, if any.

Here is a screenshot of the admin part that allows you to change the text in your footer.

Update: I have finally added code to the SVN at WordPress so you can download the plugin from WordPress.org

Download the nuAdmin Custom Footer WordPress Plugin

UPDATE

It seems there have been some people a bit confused as to where the text shows up. The image shows that the left side of the footer’s admin is what you can edit. The image below shows the default vs the custom.

Brock’s Performance Products has hired triple G interactive to develop their new ecommerce website. Check back in a couple months as we dive into this project and help make Brock’s website a more up to date and user friendly experience.

About Brock’s Performance Products:

At Brocks Performance, we strive to lead in the innovation, research and development, manufacturing and distribution of performance components and associated information in the motorcycle industry. We translate our products and knowledge into value for our customers by offering unsurpassed customer service combined with comprehensive solutions to our customers’ needs.

Brock’s Performance Products
4064 East Patterson Road
Dayton, Ohio 45430

About the Canine Collective

The Canine Collective is 501c3 non profit organization whose mission it is to provide sanctuary and re-home various breeds of dogs rescued from rural shelters and referrals. Our goal is not only to provide a second chance for our furry friends who have ‘run out-of-time’ at their local shelter but to allow rescuers full involvement and resources to follow their passion. We believe in educating people on the life saving results of adopting, spay and neuter, and the malicious truth behind puppy mills and pet stores.

triple G interactive has been able to donate some time to the organization by providing some small website maintenance to help speed up their website. Load time has drastically increased by over 90%! You can visit the Canine Collective at http://www.caininecollective.org

No big deal right? I’ll just uninstall it or not install it. Nope! Big Deal! The problem is that the add-on cannot be uninstalled the normal way. The button to unistall or disable it is grayed out.

Instant questions came to mind: Is it messing with other settings in firefox? Is it reporting back to MS what other extensions I am using? Is it monitoring my web traffic? Will it break my browser? And lastly, is this a new security problem?

Turns out that indeed it is a security hole in firefox.

Back in February, there was an instant fix on how to uninstall this add-on. You can get instructions at www.dedoimedo.com But now firefox has tried to help fix the problem for you. Today I was prompted with the below dialog box.

You’ll see I already have it blocked on firefox, but a restart of firefox will remove it from the add-ons.

If you do not already have Firefox 3.5 I suggest you upgrade. Get firefox from their website.