Magento Vertical Menu using Peter Hamilton’s code
In one of our premium Magento themes we implemented a vertical category menu with the code adapted from this thread. It’s quite easy to implement and to make it even easier for others, we decided to write a step by step tutorial.

Add a new block type in “catalog.xml” file
Create a new phtml file and name it “leftnav.phtml”, place it inside catalog/navigation
Edit CSS

Add a new block type in “catalog.xml” file
Here we presume you want to have the vertical category menu shows up on every page, …

I have a few custom blocks I’ve written / copied and tweaked from various posts on Magento’s forums. I noticed they are pretty universal in how they grab, filter and return a product collection to be used in various template files (.phtml files). The blocks below should all work from List.phtml (app\design\frontend\default\default\template\catalog\product\list.phtml).
These are Block files and are most appropriately used within the Catalog/Product area. (See my post on creating a custom module – these files won’t be overwriting any other class but can …

Many developers are familiar with the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern that is seemingly ubiquitous throughout web frameworks. Looking through the code in Magento, however, we see many other components besides the M’s the V’s and the C’s.
Each module  (a “module” meaning the separate directories within the “app/code/core/Mage” directory that comprise of Magento’s different functional areas) contains the usual Controller and Model. You’ll see that within each module, there are no Views (more on this later). You’ll also see extra tidbits, such …

Some of you who work with Magento for a long time might think that this topic is so clear that it doesn’t need to have an article. We get many inquiries to finalize the work somebody already started. One of the things we notice is that some developers tend to embed the Google Analytics code directly in the Magento theme files. Yes, it works and you will see the standard traffic data in the Google Analytics interface, but it is not a way to go.
In most of the cases, those …

I am installing a fresh magento 1.3.2.1 in my Windows XP computer. I have Xampp installed. While installing magento, I had a problem at the configuration step where I had to fill database host, username, password etc. When I click continue after filling the required fields, the installation process doesn’t move forward. I am redirected to the same page.
Solution:
I googled and was suggested to put 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost in the url; e.g. to put http://127.0.0.1/magento  instead of http://localhost/magento . I did the same but then I got the following …

I was installing Magento 1.3.2.1 in my Windows XP computer. I am using Xampp. I encountered the following errors during the installation.
PHP Extension “curl” must be loaded
PHP Extension “mcrypt” must be loaded
PHP Extension “pdo_mysql” must be loaded
I googled and the answer was to load the extension in php.ini file. In xampp, there are two places where php.ini file is found. It is present inside php folder and inside apache/bin folder. You can load extensions mentioned in the above error by changing the php.ini file. Search for curl, mcrypt and pdo_mysql …

This admin page will help to package your extensions, such as modules, add-ons, language packs, interfaces and themes, into PEAR packages which you could upload to MagentoConnect and share with other community members.
For starting on extension packaging process, log in to Magento Admin panel and go to :
Admin Panel: » System » Magento Connect » Package Extenssions
You can easily follow the 5 step process there to generate the extension that are described in the remaining article.
The extension packaging process includes generation of package.xml file with information about the package collected …

Magento Commerce is certainly an “SEO-friendly” shopping cart – but just like much of its brethren, there is still room for improvement. Granted, it has come along to fix some of the issues we pointed out in our first Magento review, and a few in the community have put together some extensions to further that along.  Yoast has even gone so far as to creating a beginner’s SEO guide for Magento which does a great job of covering some of the basic setup points for those setting up a Magento …

Social Media aspects are coming to Magento… you will soon be able to use your Facebook page to showcase products in your Magento ecommerce site using this plugin.

Magento SEO Update 2/11/2009: More activity with SEO and Magento, with some SEO developers trying to make a name for themselves in the Magento space. See below.
Magento SEO Update 11/4/2008: Magento SEO is actively evolving, and SEO links (SEO resources for those working with Magento ecommerce) are now listed down below.

It’s never too early to be looking at SEO aspects of Magento, the …

I’m back with another tutorial about Magento. I’m not the best man you can find about Magento. But I’m trying to learn something from forums. The best you learn something is when you can explain it to someone else. So this is for that!
As I had mentioned in my previous post Magento is an open source ecommerce application made with PHP and Zend Framework. Company behind it is very dedicated to this project and works a lot about it. But the missing part is the tutorials I guess. There isn’t …