There are two unused product list blocks in Magento which can be very useful if you push a few buttons, edit few layouts ..

1. Promotion
Block located in app\code\core\Mage\Catalog\Block\Product\List\Promotion.php
This is basically built in featured product functionality. It reacts to “promotion” attribute which needs to be created, so let’s click
Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes->Create New Attribute
Attribute Code: promotion
Scope: Global
Catalog Input Type for Store Owner: Yes/No

Label: Promotion (second tab)
Other params can be left alone, but it’s up to you of course. I also labeled it Promotion just for this article.
Now we need to add …

This blog post describes pros and cons of having a free Magento theme versus having a custom Magento design from a marketing perspective.
Free Magento Themes:
There are some pretty obvious advantages of using a free Magento theme:

It’s free. – This one is a no-brainer, you don’t need to invest any money in it.
It’s fast. – You don’t need to wait for it to be finished, you just download it and use it.
It works. – Most of the free Magento themes work just fine with Magento out of the box.

However, truth be …

Latest version of Magento, as of time of this writing, is 1.3.2.3. Latest, as well as previous versions come with “half-packed” support for TinyMCE editor. There are however few bugs and few steps that need to be handled in order to enable wysiwyg editing in CMS pages. Personally I am not that big of a fan of wysiwyg editors, mostly because I am developer and like to know what I write down.
However, most of the store owners are not developers or even not that much technically savvy people (not that …

Simple : ) -Ok, lets get down to business. This one is really, really simple, but powerful. In all it greatness Magento lacks the good content management solution (CMS features). Lot of people are heading down the road of integrating the WordPress and Magento. Probably everyone in web development has heard about WordPress. Personaly I like them, from Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress… But there is that little something that makes WordPress far more loving in the eyes of the client. Not to start a flame here, lets get back to the …

Many people wonder why sometimes the SID part appears in their Magento URLs. This is when your URL has additional SID query usually at the end. Take a look at the image. The curiosity is that it does not appear always. What is the most common scenario it happens? You didn’t access the site with the same domain variant you entered as your “Base URL” in your System> Configuration> Web interface.
When you decide to launch the site, you have to decide whether you will market http://www.domain.com/ URL or http://domain.com/. This …

Some merchants use NaviGate payment gateway from MerchatPlus because of the lesser costs than its big brother Authorize.net. Interesting this about this payment gateway is its compatibility with Authorize.net. So, if you need to enable it in Magento, you will not have to find someone who will have to write the module from scratch. You just need to use standard Authorize.net module, but with some modifications.
So, to use Navigate, you have to enable Authorize.net module. NaviGate is compatible with Authorize.net’s AIM Integration method. This means that any shopping cart or …

Ever wanted to “just send the email” using the built in email features in Magento? Ever hit the wall trying to do something with Magento? OK, I know the answer to the other one, just had to ask . Anyhow, sending the emails with Magento turned out to be a process of “just” a few hours of tracing Magento code.
I cant wait for smart comments like, “few hours, huh its so easy…”. Yea, thats the beauty of Magento… few hours of bashing your head against the wall while you …

Due to the “complexity” of Magento’s xml files, developers can waste great amount of time on “unnecessary” things.
When I say “complexity” I say it with purpose. XML files are not so complex by them selves, but due to extreme lack of documentation and changes Magento pumps in every new “major” release, people are lost among things that should really be sideways. Anyway, in this little article I will show you how to create basic, startup structure for your module to get it shown under Magento Admin main top menu.
As you …

As many things in Magento, removing product comparison is not available thru the admin interface. Thus, leaving us with the only option of getting down and dirty with theme files editing.

This guide is pretty straightforward and is based on the Magento ver. 1.3.1.1
Before beginning of this procedure please Go to: System-> Cache Management and disable cache. You can turn it on after you’re done.
Step 1 – reports.xml
Open: app/design/frontend/deafult/Your Theme name/layout/reports.xml and delete the following lines:

<block type="reports/product_compared" before="right.permanent.callout" name="right.reports.product.compared" template="reports/product_compared.phtml" />

<pre><block type="reports/product_viewed" before="right.permanent.callout" name="right.reports.product.viewed" template="reports/product_viewed.phtml" /></pre>

Step 2 – catalog.xml
Open app/design/frontend/deafult/Your …

Adding a new tab under onepage checkout in Magento might seem as incredibly easy task. right?! Well, it’s not. If you want to do it properly, you gonna have to do some work. Took me few hours to get this one running. Attached are screenshots for you to see final result.

Here is the module itself Inchoo_Heared4us.
Few words about module. It uses built in Admin theme module from a coworker Ivan Weiler. If you have this Admin theme module installer already please disable it, since its built into this Heared4us module. …