Magento’s XML layout engine is really unique because it allows you to override the presentation elements of an eCommerce site in a variety of ways. At the simplest level, an XML layout file determines which blocks are rendered on the page. A block is a PHP object that encapsulates a portion of the page’s HTML output. In this article, I am going to cover the use of <action /> tags in XML layout files.
Magento Under-the-Hood: Advanced Layout Techniques
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012Remote MySQL Administration for 1and1
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011If you use 1and1.com for web hosting, then you are familiar with how much of a pain their MySQL management can be. In order to access your databases on 1and1, you must first login through the 1and1 customer portal, then navigate to the MySQL databases section, find the database you want to work with, and click on the PHPMyAdmin link. It’s only a few steps, but between pages loads and a slow internet connection this can take up to a few minutes, and even then PHPMyAdmin can be clunky especially if you are used to using a desktop MySQL management tool such as MySQL Workbench or Sequel Pro (Mac). Although some hosting providers allow you to connect to your MySQL instances remotely, 1and1 does not support this (at least not by default).
What I am going to show you in this article is how to proxy a connection to your MySQL instance on 1and1′s servers so that you can manage your databases using a full-featured application like MySQL Workbench or Sequel Pro.
Problems with Magento Admin 404 Pages
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011Lately, I have been having a problem with Magento (version 1.5.0.1) and how it is handling 404 errors in the admin. Basically, any time I go to a non-existent admin URL, I am getting redirected to the frontend 404 page. What should actually be happening is that I am redirected to an admin 404 page. As it [...]
An Introduction to Magento E-Commerce
Sunday, March 13th, 2011Since I have been working with the Magento E-Commerce software as of late, I will be publishing a series of blog posts to share what I have been learning with everyone. For those of you who don’t know, Magento is a popular PHP/MySQL e-commerce platform that is super-powerful and infinitely customizable.
Installing MeeGo on an EeePC 900
Sunday, March 13th, 2011I have heard about MeeGo before, but haven’t looked into the project much until now. As it turns out, MeeGo is a linux-based distribution which is aimed at handhelds, connected TVs, in-vehicle infotainment systems, and netbooks/tablets. It was only announced by Nokia and Intel in 2010 in an effort to merge the Maemo and Moblin [...]
Magento Module-Manager Bash Completion
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011The following bash_completion script will enable your Linux shell to auto-complete Magento modman commands. Make sure you have modman in your $PATH, then simply copy the file to /etc/bash_completion.d/modman or append to ~/.bash_completion.
Town Hall with WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011I just got in from the most recent WordPressDC meetup, where the founder of WordPress and Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, entertained us with a nice QA presentation. The event was held at Fathom Creative in D.C. near 14th and Rhode Island, with about 100 people in attendance (plus another 50 or so via Livestream).
Editing the Top Panel in Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition
Monday, January 31st, 2011After upgrading my eee PC netbook to Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04 I found to my dismay that the top gnome-panel is completely locked-down. Unable to find a work-around through gconf-editor or any other easily accessible means, I decided to try my hand at manually editing the gconf configuration files. The following is a tuturial explaining how to remove the Window Picker Applet and add the DockBar and NameBar applets in its place.
Open External Links in a New Window using JQuery
Friday, June 25th, 2010Looking for a quick and dirty way to open all external links in a new window? The below snippet of code will make all links to external websites open in a new window: $(“a[href*='http://']“).attr(‘target’,'_blank’); Using the ‘*=’ selector on the href attribute, you can match any link containing http:// and set the target attribute to [...]
Latest Domain Purchase: strubeonrails.com
Friday, June 18th, 2010Recently I have been hooked on the GoDaddy app for my new Android phone. It makes it incredibly simple to register domain names on the go. Just a few minutes ago I purchased strubeonrails.com (pronounced stroo-bee-on-rails). I think it is a catchy name, and hope to start posting some useful Ruby programming tips there shortly. [...]