After searching high and low to see if I can find anything related to modifying the customer dashboard, I was surprised that nobody had this request in the forum, or that most people are just so satisfied with Magento’s dashboard out of the box…by all means, it’s very very good, but every client has their unique requests….so..

The scenario deals with client wanting a section for registered users to be able to download product catalogs and price sheets, but they don’t want to make it publicly accessible by anyone who browses their web site.  So what better place to put it then in the customer dashboard (attached picture shows the desired outcome, with a “Download” section at the bottom.

To achieve, this i had to modify 2 files: dashboard.phtml under /app/design/frontend/default/yourtemplate/template/customer/account/ and also customer.xml under /app/design/frontend/default/yourtemplate/layout/, and then lastly add a separate file called download_links.phtml and save it in a newly created folder called “downloadlinks” under /app/design/frontend/default/yourtemplate/template/

In the dashboard.phtml, after line 38, simply add:

<div class=”head”>
<h4><?php echo $this->__(’Download Links’) ?></h4>
</div>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml(’downloadlinks’) ?>

this code will sit right after the following code block:

<div class=”account-box ad-account-info”>
<div class=”head”>
<h4><?php echo $this->__(’Account Information’) ?></h4>
</div>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml(’info’) ?>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml(’address’) ?>

In customer.xml, simply add:

<block type=”core/template” name=”customer_download_links” as =”downloadlinks” template=”downloadlinks/download_links.phtml”/>

inside the reference block near line 209, the block that starts with “customer_account_index”

Lastly in the new file: download_links.phtml, you can put in php code or just simply html, in my case, i simply added some simple URL links for now..so my block looks like:

Your downloadable files:<br/>
<a href=”">2009 Product Catalog</a><br/>
<a href=”">2009 Price Sheet</a><br/>
<a href=”">Credit Application</a><br/>

Hope someone will find this tutorial helpful.

e-commerce, magento, technical notes dashboard, links, magento

ExcitingMoment.com is fashion web site / blog that caters to Chinese people outside of United States. The web site features fashion articles and introduces hot products and brands in the USA. Additionally, the site provides a concierge service in which it helps overseas users make purchases and receive packages in the United States, and in turn, ships the merchandises back to Asia.

The web site is built using Wordpress.

blog posting, news site launch, wordpress

Just came across the excellent read: LinkShares Sales Reporting Web Service and Affiliate Tracking Methods 101 by Carsten Cumbrowski, although the posting is a bit dated, but the material is still very good.

I found the read when I was researching on how affiliate networking works, how sales are tracked and what is it that merchants need to do to join an affiliate network.  Most of these affiliate networks cater to only English web sites and English advertisers and affiliate.  My idea is to build one targeting non-english affiliates and merchants. As what good is it to help clients build an e-commerce store, but you can’t help them generate sales?

Stay tuned…

blog posting Affiliate networks

The other day, I was approached by a long-time friend about building/developing a social networking web site…I was thinking to myself…are we still in 2005? We will not go into the business viability of this project, but instead, I am going to share a couple observations as I tried to do my initial due-diligence on the project.  Base on the project requirement, the client wanted something done in 45 days!! so time is precious, so I initially explored open source code base on .NET…nothing!! I can’t believe I found nothing…not even commercial packages…maybe I wasn’t googling hard enough, but I was surprised.

As I was reading a bunch of social network postings…the name Elgg kept coming up, so i took it out for a spin…downloaded and tinkered with it.  Installation was smooth, but after installation, I was a bit baffled…and i attribute this to me being spoiled by Magento and Wordpress.

After spending a couple hours in the admin and trying to figure out how to customize the software, I decided to give up for now…until the client decides to really go for this.

Couple observations that make open source a good open source. Things that Elgg lacked…

1. lack of good documentation from the people behind Elgg…most of the documentation are too general to be of any use.

2. user community is too small - discussion forum wasn’t very active

3. lack of plugins - there were some, but not enough plugins (again, i am spoiled by Wordpress).

Attached is a screenshot of a plain vanilla installation, nice and clean, but not enough plugins and documentations to ease the learning curve.

blog posting, evaluation elgg, open source, social networking

This will be the start of a series of fixes that I find useful in implementing Magento projects, rather than digging through the forums (which contains a lot of fixes old and new for various versions of Magento, i will also specify on the version in which the fix worked for me).

Edit page: page.xml inside: app\design\frontend\default\blue\layout

<block type=”page/html” name=”root” output=”toHtml” template=”page/3columns.phtml”>

to

<block type=”page/html” name=”root” output=”toHtml” template=”page/2columns-right.phtml”>

View discussion on this note: http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/16838/

magento, technical notes catalog ui, magento, technical notes

2009 is the year of the Ox, according to the Chinese zodiac.  This is the year, in which we will have to run our business in spirit of the Ox. Patience, perseverance, honesty and loyalty will help everyone get through this tough economic conditions.  For many small businesses, this is the best time to explore the Internet as a new sales venue, if you haven’t already.  Invest cautiously and wisely, hope we will have a bull run 2009.

blog posting 2009

Having helped so many clients set up their web hostings and e-mails with the web hosting company where the sit is hosted…i have come to realize, why use the primitive “free” email provided by the web hosting companies when you can use the best e-mail application from Google: Google Apps for Business; essentially this is simply gmail with your own domain name.

I have recommended this solution to so many friends, and yet everytime i mentioned  this service, they were so surprised that such great thing existed.  With Google Apps for Business, you can essentially host up to 25 user accounts for free, and anything above that you would have to pay for their service.  My honest opinon is that even if you have to pay, it will be worth every penny, as Gmail has one of the best Spam filters out there.

The best feature i liked about Google mail is that i can actually point multiple domains names to the same mailbox, so i can have jerry@domainA.com and jerry@domainB.com point to the same mailbox, and i can send from either addresses. Pretty cool imo.

Drop me an email if you need assistance in setting this up.

Microsoft’s Office Live and Yahoo’s Business Mail offers similar features, I would say Yahoo is second to Google, but you would have to pay for it, as for Microsoft Live mail, it offers similar service for free, but as a veteran user of hotmail/live mail, I suggest you just go with Google Apps for Business.

blog posting, recommendations, services email, gmail, service

Just came across news of Magento Commerce’s latest release of Magento 1.2.0.1, time for another round of download and studying of the new and improved Magento.  Hopefully we will see a boost in site performance.

e-commerce, magento e-commerce, magento, software