Archive - July, 2010

Latest version of SMTP Pro Finally Uploaded to Magento Connect

July 25, 2010 in Google Apps Email Magento Extension, Magento, SMTP Pro Magento Extension with 45 Comments

Geez it’s been a long time coming thanks to Invalid package.xml format errors and duplicate maintainers and goodness-knows-what else. You can finally get the latest version of SMTP Pro – 1.3.4 – even though it’s identical to 1.3. (thank Magento Connect…).

For those who want to install the Magento extension manually (and if you are engineering Magento you probably should) – you can get version 1.3.4 of SMTP Pro here.

If you read my last post on the improvements, you’ll know that it has some great new features for sending, and logging email in Magento using either SMTP or Gmail/Google Apps. So please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Easily Set a Custom Order Number in Magento With My Free SetStartOrderNumber Extension

July 24, 2010 in Magento, Set Start Order Number Extension with 46 Comments

Every time I launch a new Magento store I have to go and hack the database to change the order, shipment, invoice and credit memo numbers. This just doesn’t seem right, and seeing as I was about to launch two stores (in one week!) I thought it’d be better to make the order increment ID’s custom from within the Magento admin panel. Now what I didn’t realize before I set about doing this was that someone had already made a very good extension to customize order numbers – woops.

So not knowing I could just buy an extension for $60, I went ahead and coded one up on my train ride home Friday afternoon.

This is a blog post about what the extension does (and does not) do and how it’s made. I’m going to release it for free, if you need full order customizing functionality, you should still buy Adjustware’s one, it has some great features.

If you’re just here for the free software, you can get it on Magento Connect, if you’d like to learn more about it and how it’s made, please read on.
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Why are my Magento products not showing up?!

July 14, 2010 in Magento, Web Development with 64 Comments

This is a just a quickie – got caught out with a weird issue yesterday where the Magento products in a particular category just disappeared – they still existed if you navigated directly to their URL, but they would not show in their categories (though the Manage Categories screen in the Magento admin still showed those products in their correct category).

These things always happen at inopportune times, I was right about to start a pre-go-live review of a site, and was left with one category completely devoid of products, thanks for making me look like an egg, Magento!
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Structuring your Magento project for Engineering, not Hacking

July 7, 2010 in Magento, Web Development with 18 Comments

This is a blog post about how I structure my Magento store development, and how that has been made easier thanks to the efforts of Colin Mollenhour and his script modman. Hopefully after reading this, you’re all inspired to go set up a similar project structure, because it gives a repeatable, hopefully less upgrade ruined Magento experience. Certainly if you’re not inspired, I’d like to hear about how you are structuring your projects – the more talk of this, the better the overall quality of Magento stores in the wild, I hope.
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