Here’s a short list of magento codes to do some of the simple stuff. It’s a little empty at the moment but I’ll keep adding to it over time.

• Check if customer is logged in

  <?php
  $_customer = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->isLoggedIn();
  
  if ($_customer) {
  // do stuff
  }
  ?>
  

• Get product image

  <?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'image'); ?>
  

• Show image using current skin path (PHTML)

  <img src="<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl('images/logo.png');?>" alt="logo" />
  

• Show image using current skin path (CMS)

  <img src={{skin url="images/logo.png"}}  />
  

• Show a custom block (CMS)

  {{block type="catalog/product_featured" name="product_featured" as="product_featured" template="catalog/product/featured.phtml"}}
  

• Show a custom block (XML)

  <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.myblock" after="-" template="catalog/navigation/myblock.phtml"/>
  

• Show CMS block (PHTML)

  <?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('my_block_identifier')->toHtml() ?>
  

• Show short version of review summary

  <?php echo $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_link,"short",true) ?>
  

Suggestions for any more helpful code snippets are more than welcome!

Ben
Creative Lead
MS Internet

A website we developed recently required some boxes on the homepage that link through to a specific category each, and each box needed to show an image from a random product from within that category. If you would like to do the same, here’s how it’s done:

1. Create a PHTML file in your template folder, such as app/design/frontend/yourpackage/yourtheme/template/catalog/navigation/box.phtml
2. Put this code in the file:

   $images = array();
   
   $catId=37; // put your category ID in here
   $products =  Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
   ->addAttributeToSelect('image')
   ->addCategoryFilter(Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($catId));
   
   Mage::getSingleton('catalog/product_status')->addSaleableFilterToCollection($products); // Only select products that are salable
   
   $products->load();
   
   
   foreach($products as $product){
   $images[] = $product->getImageUrl();
   }
   
   
   if (sizeof($images) > 1) {
   $random_image = array_rand($images, 1);
   } else {
   $random_image = 0;
   }
   
   echo "<div class='box'><img src='" . $images[$random_image] . "'/></div>";
   

   You can find the ID for your category by logging into the admin area and going to Catalog > Manage Categories and clicking on a category. You should see the ID come up next to the category name in the editable area.

3. All you need to do now is specify where the box is shown. Open a layout file, such as app/design/frontend/yourpackage/yourtheme/layout/catalog.xml and use this layout update:

   <reference name="left"><!-- change left to any structural block you want to target, such as right or content. -->
   <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.box"  template="catalog/navigation/box.phtml"/> <!--change the template path to wherever you put the template file -->
   </reference>
   

And that’s it! You should now have a block that shows an image from a random product within a specific category. You’ll need to do some styling to get it looking right mind but I hope this helps.

Ben
Creative Lead
MS Internet

One of the most frequent requests we get for Magento sites is to tame what the thumbnails do on the product page. Of course there are plenty of plugins for adding a lightbox of some sort, but if you simply want to swap out the image in the zoomer window for one of the thumbnails, here’s what you’ll need to do:

• Open app/design/frontend/yourpackage/yourtheme/template/catalog/product/view/media.phtml
• Go down to line 71 and change:

  <li>
  <a href="#" onclick="popWin('<?php echo $this->getGalleryUrl($_image) ?>', 'gallery', 'width=300,height=300,left=50,top=50,location=no,status=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes'); return false;">
  <img src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($this->getProduct(), 'thumbnail', $_image->getFile())->resize(56); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>" />
  </a>
  </li>

  to

  <li>
  <a href="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($this->getProduct(), 'image', $_image->getFile()); ?>" title="<?php echo $_product->getName();?>" onclick="$('image').src = this.href; return false;">
  <img src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($this->getProduct(), 'thumbnail', $_image->getFile())->resize(70, 70); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_image->getLabel()) ?>"/>
  </a>
  </li>
  

And that’s it! Your product image should now swap out for whichever thumbnail you click.

Credit to Scott from http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/6402/#t61131

Ben
Creative Lead
MS Internet

Today we finally got our integration of Sage Pay Form for Magento. Sage Pay is the UK and Ireland’s most popular payment gateway and Magento is rapidly gaining popularity. We will be submitting our integration to Magento as a community app but it will be available from us until then.

UPDATE

The extension is now live in Magento Connect at http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/3060/sagepay-formerly-protx-form as a free community extension.

To install enter the key in Magento Connect (from the page above) and the extension should install completely.

You will need a Sagepay account. You can get one HERE.

Then you need to enter the details in Magento > Admin > System > Configuration > Payment Methods > SagePay Form.

Next you must run a transaction in test mode using a SagePay test card found HERE and successfully refund this.

The , all you have to do is ask SagePay to let you “Go Live” and change the server target from “Test” to “Live”.

This is currently tested in v1.3.2.4 so we would be interested to hear whether it runs ok in other versions. There is no reason why it should not.

Happy Trading!

At MS Internet we are proud to use Magento as the base of the majority of our e-commerce projects. As a software Magento is very thoroughly built and provides a plethora or functions. The following is taken from the Magento site:

The downside of Magento is that it is a huge application with almost 10,000 files. This makes the task of installing the base software quiet time consuming. If you have SSH access this can be done much more quickly than via ftp but many hosts will not allow this. So, we have created this Magento Pre-Installer to get and unpack the files and install the sample data.

DOWNLOAD

This zip file contains one PHP script. To run simply upload to your web root. If you provide database credentials you can also install the sample data. This script fetches Magento version 1.3.2.4.