\app\code\core\Mage\Rss\Block\Catalog\

under the above folder, you will see different files (category.php, new.php, tag.php, etc.) each file controls the output of each type of RSS feed Magento has built in by default. So if you want to modify the RSS feed format for your products in a certain category you would modify the category.php file. For me, i was looking at syndicating my new products, so I modified new.php file.

When opening up the new.php file, scroll down to approximately line 99-104, under the public function addNewItemXmlCallback($args) is where the RSS feed content is formatted, so you can simply move around the html table and or select to replace the product description with the short description, etc.  For me, I simply removed the long description and kept the pricing, product image and the product title. Below is my revised output code snippet:

$description = ‘<table><tr>’.
‘<td><a href=”‘.$product->getProductUrl().’”><img src=”‘. $this->helper(’catalog/image’)->init($product, ‘thumbnail’)->resize(75, 75) .’” border=”0″ align=”left” height=”75″ width=”75″></a><br>Price:’.Mage::helper(’core’)->currency($product->getPrice()).
($product->getPrice() != $final_price  ? ‘ Special Price:’. Mage::helper(’core’)->currency($final_price) : ”).
‘</td>’.
‘</tr></table>’;

and the output looks like the following when it gets syndicated to a content driven site, you see the RSS feed of the products at the right side of the screen:

http://links.chosen29.com - this is a PLIGG-driven bookmarking web site similar to Digg.com

The RSS feed from Magento is fed through Google’s Feedburner and then syndicated thereafter, primarily for the purpose of better exposure and trackability.

Lastly, here’s a shameless plug, please visit my new web site at Chosen29.com

Funny thing is that the fix to include the Address field isn’t straightforward and NOBODY ran into this problem, as there were no postings on Magento forum nor google search…I was surprised.  Anyways, what happens when users click on “Export to CSV” is essentially what you see in the grid below it is what gets exported, so the fix is to include the Address field in grid.  The file to modify is a core file, so you would have to update this when you do a Magento upgrade. Here’s the path to the file:

app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Customer/grid.php

Near line 45 you will find the below block of code, you will add the line that is in bold:

protected function _prepareCollection()
{
$collection = Mage::getResourceModel(’customer/customer_collection’)
->addNameToSelect()
->addAttributeToSelect(’email’)
->addAttributeToSelect(’created_at’)
->addAttributeToSelect(’group_id’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_street’, ‘customer_address/street’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_postcode’, ‘customer_address/postcode’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_city’, ‘customer_address/city’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_telephone’, ‘customer_address/telephone’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_region’, ‘customer_address/region’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’)
->joinAttribute(’billing_country_id’, ‘customer_address/country_id’, ‘default_billing’, null, ‘left’);

$this->setCollection($collection);

return parent::_prepareCollection();
}

Then near line 103 add a the code below in bold:

$this->addColumn(’Telephone’, array(
‘header’    => Mage::helper(’customer’)->__(’Telephone’),
‘width’     => ‘100′,
‘index’     => ‘billing_telephone’
));
$this->addColumn(’billing_address’, array(
‘header’    => Mage::helper(’customer’)->__(’Address’),
‘width’     => ‘150′,
‘index’     => ‘billing_street’
));

Now you should see Address field displayed in the grid and when export is clicked it would export the field accordingly.

Basically by default the Magento registration form only requires you to enter First Name, Last Name, Email and VAT/Tax Number, but that in a real world scenario is not practical and not enough for business owners to follow up on.  Base on looking into the code here: app/design/frontend/default/blue/template/customer/form/register.phtml, we know Magento has every intention of adding additional fields, just they haven’t been enabled.

By following the fix here, you can reveal the additional fields. Essentially you just have to comment out a IF-Then statement to reveal the proper form fields. Below is the result:

Why are we selling? Becuase we have more projects to work on, and we simply don’t have time to operate the business side of the e-commerce site, and that includes marketing the site, fulfilling orders, finding new products, and most importantly — providing excellent customer service.

How much are you selling for? Make your best offer and we will consider every bid.  We just want the site to be in good hands; someone willing to put in the effort to market the site.

What’s included? We will include the domain name, help you move to your desired web hosting company? or we will host it for you for a small monthly fee. You will also have the code (the site runs on Magento 1.2.1), and the existing database, and you will be hooked up with the product supplier for future order fulfilment (they are a great supplier to work with!!).

For more information email me at jerry at casualcommerce dot com

After evaluting the platform, I find the platform easy to implement, with one catch being that at its current state, you can’t install it locally or even on a production server under a virtual directory.  For example you will not be able to install it under http://www.52my.info/digg, instead you will need to install it at the root of its own domain, so here’s my site: http://news.52my.info

Obviously, I have localised it for Chinese audience..and the back-end admin have made in-line translation easy and the use of smarty template made customizing easy (I stuck with the wistie default template, as I found it to be good enough).

Enjoy.

Recently working on a project in which the client wants to host the web site themselves, but by default, the LAMP implementation is totally not optimized for Magento.

Did some research and came across this post filled with performance tuning tips..althought i haven’t tried them, but I believe the tips are worth a try if you are hosting your own magento installation.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/36225/

The problem appears to be an issue with the “Downloader” folder not being writeable in the production environment; this makes perfect sense from security perspective, but there just needs to be better documentation on how to best setup the site so that Magento Connect works as advertised.

I googled and came across the following post: https://www.gigapros.com/support/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=164, the long and short of is is simply to make Magento fully writeable (777) when you run the Magento Connect, and then reset the permissions after the extension has been installed….it’s a somewhat satisfactory workaround i guess.

Here’s how to do this thru your SSH client. Log in to your SSH account and then execute the following commands:

1. cd <your_magento_folder_path>
2. find . -type d -exec chmod 777 {} \;
3. chmod 666 downloader/config.ini

You should now be able to access the Magento Connect Manager. When you have finished the installation/upgrade, you should reset the permissions by executing the following SSH commands:

1. find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
2. find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
3. chmod o+w var media app/etc/use_cache.ser

To more naturally add google ads, what you simply need to do is modify your “Main Index Template” usually the index.php file.  In there you should find a while loop that looks something like:

if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) :
the_post();
the_content();
endwhile;
endif;

just change it to something like this:

// Set Counter to 1, First Post
$counter = 1;
if (have_posts()) :
   while (have_posts()) :
      $counter = $counter + 1;
      the_post();
      the_content();
      if(2 == $counter)
      {
         echo 'Adsense code';
      }
   endwhile;
endif;

the things to look for and add are in bold.  The “2″ indicates that google ads will be inserted in every 2 posts. This information was obtained here

As I started to add new products, I noticed that newest items are added to the last page of the category that it was assigned to…not a very smart implementatio in my opinon. Did some googling and found a fix here:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/1176/

Essentially what needs to be done is to fix the file: app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Product/List/toolbar.php

near line 47, I changed the original code to the following:

$this->_availableOrder = array(
‘entity_id’ => $this->__(’Newest’),
‘name’      => $this->__(’Name’),
‘price’     => $this->__(’Price’)
);

The first item listed will be the default sort filter, the default was “best value”…which didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Second item to fix up is in the same file, but you go to line 108 (approx.) and modify the highlighted part as below:

public function getCurrentDirection()
{
if ($dir = (string) $this->getRequest()->getParam($this->getDirectionVarName())) {
$dir = strtolower($dir);
if (in_array($dir, array(’asc’, ‘desc’))) {
return $dir;
}
}
return ‘desc‘;

default is asc, but you need to change it to descending so that it sorts from newest id first.

Please send any questions and feedback related to the web site to me. Thanks.