Brian Cline

Category: Magento

  • Book Review: Magento Site Performance Optimization

    Magento Site Performance Optimization by Mathieu Nayrolles is a handy little primer on the basics of optimizing a server for magento. This little gem covers the basics, doesn’t spend a lot of time on fluff, and moves quickly into optimizing MySQL and covers the basics of using two mysql instances (through replication) one for writing […]

  • Why I Recommend PayPal

    I spend a significant amount of my timing deal with ecommerce and different shopping systems. One of my all time favourite solutions is using PayPal and Magento together because they have been designed from the ground up to interact well together. International Acceptance PayPal is accepted in many countries and is capable of doing automatic […]

  • Magento CheckOut Page Blank

    I had a very strange issue with a client’s installation of magento a few nights ago. The checkout page was completely blank and the apache error logs were completely empty. I tried all the usual fixes of looking at file permissions, updating the magento installation, checking for new modules, etc but none of these solutions […]

  • Add A Facebook Like Button

    A while ago, Facebook created the Facebook Like Button that works by using an iframe of FBML. The Like button allows you to easily get some free social media coverage with consumers. Many websites and blogs are making use of the Facebook Like button and any other ways possible of sharing on social media networks […]

  • How to Tell What Version of Magento

    The easiest way of telling what version of Magento you are running is by viewing file app/Mage.php and looking for a function called getVersionInfo(). The function should look something like the following and be fairly self explanatory to most developers. public static function getVersionInfo() { return array( ‘major’ => ‘1’, ‘minor’ => ‘5’, ‘revision’ => […]

  • Magento An Introduction

    What is Magento? Magento is an open source eCommerce platform with two versions: Magento Community Editon, and Magento Enterprise Edition. Magento is developed by Magento Inc and is built upon PHP, and the Zend Framework. The Magento Community Edition uses the Open Software License (OSL) v3.0 which is sufficient for most online stores. Why use […]

  • How to Add CSS & JavaScript to a Magento CMS Page

    Magento is an insanely flexible system that has a lot of potential, but of course with this flexibility comes a lot of learning. Adding a JavaScript file and a CSS file to a specific CMS page isn’t very difficult. We should always consider adding the JavaScript file or CSS file to the theme if we’re […]

  • Displaying The Newsletter On a CMS Page/Block

    I really like magento, and a lot of the built in features although it can be difficult sometimes to figure out how to use things. Displaying the newsletter in a CMS Page / Block is pretty easy. Just simply paste the following code into the design block, and away you go! {{block type=”newsletter/subscribe” template=”newsletter/subscribe.phtml”}} Hope […]

  • Magento Add/Edit Footer Links

    Editing the footer links in magento is actually pretty easy. By default, there should be a static block called footer_links. The static block starts off with at least these two links: About Us, Customer Service. Editing is as simple as signing into the admin, and Clicking CMS->Static Blocks->footer_links and making your changes. Good luck!

  • Magento – Stuck in Maintenance Mode

    After upgrade magento to 1.5.0.1, my client’s website was stuck in magento maintenance mode. I wasn’t able to easily find a way to fix it by looking in the normal database tables, but did locate a file called “maintenance.flag” in the magento root. So, to fix maintenance mode look for the maintenance flag and remove […]

  • How do I upgrade magento?

    Before you upgrade magento you should be sure to make a complete back up of your files and your database. (It also isn’t wise to test the upgrade on a production store!) To upgrade the easiest way is to make use of downloader, using a user with permissions, sign in, and then use the following […]

  • Magento – Adding Feaured Products to Front Page

    The owner of Nature Bumz wanted to be able to add featured products to the home page of their magento store each day without having to modify to edit the content. Inchoo has created a great extension, called Featured Products, that features a great backend allowing the admins to choose featured products from a simple […]

  • Magento – Setting Paypal to Redirect Back

    Quick steps on how to redirect back to your magento store upon a successful purchase. Unfortunately, you can only redirect to one page. Sign into Paypal account Click directly on Profile -> Website Payment Preferences Change Auto Return to on. Fill Return URL to http://www.mymagentositregoeshere.com/checkout/onepage/success/ Save and then go test it! After a successful paypal […]

  • BRCline Consulting – 1st Magento Site

    BRCline Consulting has been busy working on its first ecommerce site to create Niagara Fall’s Natue Bumz Cloth Diaper Shop. The owner, Crystal Cline, needed to accept paypal, credit cards, and be able to create her own blog along with adding inventory, and all of the traditional sort of business functions. I chose magento to […]