Magento Developer Paradise on Twitter

watch the #magedev hashtag on Twitter for info about Magento Developer Paradise.

Also, more information on Magento's blog: Developer Paradise Kick-OFF

List of 40 free Magento themes

Check out the list: 40 Brilliant Free Magento Themes 2010 Edition

URLs in Magento

2 simple rules to keep in mind when insert a link or an image in a Magento:
- getBaseUrl()
-getSkinUrl()



Next, when you create a link it's easy just to say:
.... href="http://www.blogger.com/customer/account"
instead you should use: ... href="<?php $this->getBaseUrl(); ?>customer/account" ...

For images:
img src="/skin/frontend/default/SKIN_NAME/images/rss.png"
instead you should use: img src="<?php $this->getSkinUrl('images/rss.png');?>" ...

3 reasons to choose a consultant

Experience

When you start a new line of business or approach a new market you can use consultantcy services.
Starting an eCommerce business without online experience is a process. You can discover and face problems and issues, solve them and gain experience or you can have a guided tour and avoid most problems and focus on better marketing, customer relashions and so on. Using a consultant helps in this process.

Neutrality

A consultant will give you the right solution for you without selling software, specific products and so on. Based on this he can provide his services. It's in your best interest. He gets paid for giving you the right advice.

Ease
You need to make changes that affect your company personnel and you don't want to be the bearer of bad news?
A consultant can take the blame and do that for you. He does not need to stay afterwards and face the employees. Btw, see Up in the air

osCommerce - default language issues

Recently an online shop using osCommerce 2.2 faced a problem:
Default language displayed was english even though in setup I used Romanian...

It seems that osCommerce checks browser language and displays that as default language. On way to solve this is:

if (isset($HTTP_GET_VARS['language']) && tep_not_null($HTTP_GET_VARS['language'])) {
      $lng->set_language($HTTP_GET_VARS['language']);
    } else {
      $lng->get_browser_language();
    }

Comment the line of code

//$lng->get_browser_language();

And you should have this solved.

Gettin' back

It's been a while since I've written at least weekly on this, but I am getting back.

Mainly because I have to write more on my Romanian blog.
Anyway, I'm getting back on writing on this blog, so there will be 3 main categories with information I like to share:

Web Development
General information, mostly PHP, web frameworks like CakePHP and Zend Framework, issues I face, tutorials  

eCommerce
Technical articles about platforms like osCommerce,  Magento, Prestashop.

ERP Consultancy
Lately I've been involved in some projects regarding the process of choosing and ERP, implementing an ERP system, business analysis and so on. So I will share this with you.

I will also post personal stuff, so please bear me.
Any feedback is welcome.

Zend Framework 1.9.5 was released

Two weeks after Zend Framework 1.9.4 was released, Zend Framework 1.9.5 is available for download. Changelog contains mostly bug fixes and minor changes... Still waiting for 2.0 version :)

Another mockup tool: Mockingbird

Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.

Mockingbird is built using Cappuccino framework.

Other similar tools for mockup interfaces are: Flairbuilder and Balsamiq.

CakePHP 1.3 alpha is out

CakePHP team announced CakePHP 1.3 alpha - ready for download. New features include:

• Router - generate urls with new style prefixes
• Helpers - Helper::assetTimestamp() - to prevent url caching
• Helpers - TextHelper - highlight function
• Helpers - NumberHelper::addFormat() function
• Error handling
• improved Scaffolding
• Logging - Configure::write('log', E_WARNING);
• Models and datasources
• Console and Shells

You can see the complete list here: List of new features in CakePHP 1.3 alpha

Shozu on my n82 phone

Configured my blogger account too. Need to get a keyboard 4 my phone

Magento installation - login problems on localhost

If anyone is trying to install Magento on localhost, instead of using the url: http://locahost/magentoStore (or similar) use http://127.0.0.1/magentoStore (127.0.0.1 instead of localhost) Forum thread related to magento installation localhost login Works for Firefox and IE, not working on Safari though...