Just found out a really quick and easy way to figure out which Magento PHP Class is responsible for putting together everything that is needed for any given template. It’s as easy as dropping in one simple line of code. Just place the following into any .phtml template files:
<?php echo 'This Template\'s Class: '.get_class($this); ?> Source: http://prattski.com/2008/12/01/magento-find-which-class-is-responsible-for-the-template
We actually forgot to do this with one of our sites – but when developing, we obviously had cache fully disabled. When you go to launch, there are so many other things you are thinking about that it is easy to forget to enable all the cache again.
So, as a reminder to all of you that have launched Magento sites, turn back on the cache if you haven’t yet! It will definitely speed up the performance of the site.
Source: http://prattski.com/2008/12/10/magento-when-launching-turn-cacheing-back-on/
Among a lot of new improvements to Magento introduced with the 1.4 version there are some new features that stand out in terms of content management, system performance and also some user enhancing functionalities.
We all heard about the widgets and content WYSIWYG features added to Magento 1.4 but these improvements add more value to the shopping experience for users and store owners.
This one is my favorite since “Get notified when this product is back in stock” has been on my mind for quite some time as well as with many of the store owners and shoppers obviously and inevitably Varien decided to include it in this release.
We’re proud to present free Facebook Connect Magento extension which enables customers fast and easy registration and login with their Facebook identity. Demo and help page can be seen on our playground demo store, just click “Connect with Facebook” link in upper right corner.
Download Inchoo_Facebook-0.9.1.zip, extract files to appropriate place following directory structure, reload cache and navigate to http://www.yourstore.com/facebook/. You’ll be presented with more detailed help page.
For Facebook Connect to work you need to Setup Application on Facebook and obtain its API Key and Application Secret.
Use your store name as application name and read and accept terms of service. On second screen switch to Connect tab and set Connect URL to the store domain where you plan to implement Facebook Connect. Switch to Advanced tab, set the domain that your emails will be coming from in Email Domain field and save settings.
Other Connect settings are optional, but you might want to add store logo for example.
New Magento 1.4 brings changes in how errors are displayed along with an easy way to put your favorite store into maintenance mode.
If you check index.php file of new Magento 1.4, you’ll notice one interesting thingy, it checks for existence of “maintenance.flag” file in store root, if it’s found your store is put into maintenance mode. Service Temporarily Unavailable page is displayed with Please try again later message. Remember that administration can’t be accessed in maintenance mode along with the store.
Developers probably noticed that errors also are no longer displayed like before, as mentioned on Magento blog:
Since version 1.4.0.0 for security reasons the trace in the Magento error report page is disabled by default. The “Error log number” does not give any information about the error. To enable the trace copy the errors/local.xml.sample to errors/local.xml and follow the instructions described in that file.
