Magento – Add Static Block to CMS Page
Static blocks are a great way to add sections of HTML to your CMS or Catalog pages. I’m going to show you how to add a static block to a CMS page.
It’s a 2 step process and a very simple one. First, create your static block by going to CMS->Static Blocks. You will use the identifier of your static block to reference it on the CMS page. Edit the CMS page you would like this block to appear in, and add this code in the location where you would like it to show up:
{{block type="cms/block" block_id="home-page-promo"}}
MySQL – How to Export and Import tables with the Command Line
2 commands I use often throughout the day is importing and exporting large databases into MySQL VIA the command line. Here is how I do it where “USERNAME” is your username, “PASSWORD” is your password and “DATABASE” is your database name.
To Export:
mysqldump -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE | gzip -c > ~/dump_2010-06-14.sql.gz
To Import:
mysql -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE < database.sql
Also, you may have a large database that may give you errors while importing. You can use this command to force the import without warnings or errors:
mysql -f -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE < database.sql
Magento extensions and modern e-commerce
For an online retailer, choosing an e-commerce software platform is one of the most important decisions. Depending on the size of the business, the key requirements could vary from robustness and scalability critical for large retailers to the need for simplicity and flexibility for small store owners. Perhaps it is the ability to effortlessly meet the diverse needs of disparate audiences that has made Magento one of the fastest growing e-commerce applications globally. Already, the Magento e-commerce suite has carried out over US$25 billion in transactions via the 30,000+ merchants who rely on this platform, including some from the Internet Retailer Top 500 list. No wonder then that the platform continues to receive international acclaim, most recently from well known research organization Forrester Research which highlighted Magento as ‘unique’ among various e-commerce technology providers.
One of the key contributors to Magento’s rising popularity as the platform of choice is its ‘flexibility’ and the control that it puts in the hands of the online merchant. Unlike some of the other ‘closed’ or even open source e-commerce platforms, Magento does not place restrictions on business flows and processes. With over 1700 Magento extensions already available (and counting..), technology complements the business rather than business being shaped by the limits posed by technology.
Possibilities galore with Magento extensions
As the e-commerce and online marketing landscape evolves at frenetic pace, resulting in newer business models and novel marketing opportunities, online store owners need their technology to be as dynamic or risk being left behind. This is where the continuously expanding range of Magento extensions becomes invaluable.
Developers continue to enrich the application with powerful add-ons to fulfill even the not-so-obvious requirements of store owners. Presenting irrefutable proof of the value of the open source paradigm in e-commerce, these extensions help automate and optimize different business processes.
Characteristics of truly valuable Magento extensions
While new add-ons for the different Magento modules become available very regularly, some fundamental and seemingly obvious characteristics differentiate the really valuable extensions from the just OK ones. If you are looking for extensions for your business, run this simple 4-factor test.
- Usefulness: An extension has to either help contribute to greater sales (revenues), build long-term customer engagement or improve operational efficiencies and effectiveness. Does the extension offer the features and functionality that will help you address your unique business needs or problems?
- Cost-effectiveness: Is the price you pay for the add-on worth the value you expect to generate from using the extension?
- Customizability: Can you customize your extension easily both in terms of front-end design as well as functionality to suit your specific needs?
- User-friendliness: Is the extension easy to configure and use so that a store owner can focus on the business side of things? It should ultimately help save time, not add more work.
Epitomizing the above characteristics is the portfolio of extensions from aheadWorks, one of the largest Magento extensions development companies. The company’s range of free and paid-for add-ons, covers every aspect of the e-commerce process – back-end store administration, user experience, marketing and other operational aspects of the business.
Below, we briefly touch upon some of the most well-received Magento add-ons developed by the company:
(more…)Excellent Analytics – Import Google Analytics into Excel
I ran into this nice Excel Plugin that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics into a spreadsheet. It’s an open source project and 100% free to download and use for individuals and businesses.
Disallow hotlinking while allowing requests from robots.txt and favicons
We all hate Leechers. Here’s how to stop them in their tracks from stealing your images and your bandwidth!
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(^/robots\.txt|\.ico)$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp|pdf)$ [F,L]
How to create a sandbox PayPal Payflow account
I’ve been working with PayPal PayFlow Pro a lot lately. But before I got the hang of it, I couldn’t figure out how to create a sandbox account for Payflow.
As it goes, it’s different than setting up a standard sandbox account. To set up a Payflow account for testing, you would walk through the sign up process as if you were signing up for a live Payflow account. Once you get to the section in the sign up process where it is asking for the billing information, just cancel out of the process. This creates a test account for you at this point, which you can access by signing into PayPal Manager with the login and password that you created. The partner will be PayPal.
Creating an .htaccess file on Windows
Everyone who has tried creating a .htaccess on windows knows that Windows Explorer does not accept the ‘.’ character as the first character of a file. For most of you this may be old stuff, but for the newbies, the quick way to create a file that starts with a ‘.’ is actually pretty simple.
Open notepad and save the document with file name .htaccess with the ‘save as type’ set to ‘All Files’; or save the document with file name as “.htaccess” including the quotes. Hope this helps someone!
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