In the previous article we have described how the different settings can be applied to a custom extension. There’s nothing difficult for the simple settings such as text field or text area. But, if you look at the drop down, multiselect or editable items list you’ll notice that these items have additional fields, e.g. source_model, backend_model, frontend_model. Let’s focus on these models and find out more info about creating settings that require data models. Read More

From time to time  Magento developers face with a need to add settings for their extensions. As it’s hard to remember all necessary details for each setting, so we would like to share our snippets which contain xml code of the most recent settings used in Magento admin. Read More

There are many tools in Magento which allow you to view or generate and download different reports. So, we can conclude that Magento system has integrated tools for CSV and XML files generation. It might help in the situation when you need to generate a report for some feed or just export a list of structured data. We would like to demonstrate the small example that adds an ability to generate and download CSV files.
Let’s assume that you have already created your custom extension and wish to add a CSV export functionality. If it’s not the case and you can’t guess how to create an extension, then you can always find the light in our previous articles, for example this one. We called our extension Atwix_Tweaks so in the code examples below we will use this title.
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Ability to create pages with custom content is a great feature provided by Magento. You can easily create a new page for your store and add text, html, images, different widgets there. But sometimes people want to have something non-trivial on their pages. Usually it means that you need to operate some knowledge before you’ll get an appropriate result. In this article we would like to suggest you a simple solution on how to place a products list, prefiltered by some specific attribute, on your CMS page. The example below describes how to create a simple extension for this purpose.
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In previous articles we told you how to operate with columns in adminhtml grids. Usually the process is quite fast, for example, if you want to add simple column from the database. But sometimes you need to add column with complex value, processed by renderer. You say: “it’s not a big deal to use renderers…” Right, until you face with sort and filter..
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We continue to share our experience with Magento developers by publishing the next set of Best Practices in Magento coding. If you missed our previous article, here it is.
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Pretty often we face a task, where we need to add a custom column to the customers/orders grid in Magento admin. The solution is simple and if you google for it, you will get tons of solutions. However, pretty much all of them describe the same way, which isn’t always proper. Read More

The product page is one of the most important parts of your store. That’s why so much attention is paid to make this page look perfect.
Tabs is a good way to display a lot of data inside a compact block. It helps to avoid huge scroll bars and also looks much nicer on portable devices. You can find tons of Magento templates with tabs on the product view page and we are going to tell you the easiest way to add them there. All examples are applicable to the default Magento theme, but with practice you can use following methods to customize your own theme. Read More

When starting Magento development, first thing you find out that in order to see the changes you have to clear the cache. There is also an option to disable the cache completely, but performance wise – it’s not a very smart move. As your experience on the system grows you are getting to know which exact cache to clear to see the changes, be it config, layout, FPC cache or any other. Nevertheless, these operations are pretty cumbersome as admin session times out from time to time. You may also know that enabling template hints is not a quick operation either.
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Often there are situations where customer has some issues while placing orders or making operations from the “My Account” section. At that point, an ability for admin to login as a customer and see what is wrong becomes very useful. Read More