Quick Summary:

1. High-level explanation of SVN
2. Who should use SVN
3. Why it should be used
4. Specific things to watch out for with Magento
5. Bonus: optional tools

1. A high-level explanation SVN

“SVN” (aka “Subversion”) changes and improves the development process. It is an “enhancement” to “CVS” which allows developers to maintain local, staging, and production environments. This is a best proactive for most software development (and Magento) projects. SVN relates to “Git” (though some prefer one more than the other) and is free to use.

Simply put, SVN is a tool that keeps a revision history of code over a period of time. You keep project code located within the repository and pull a copy of the entire code with one simple command (a total of about 6 seconds). In addition, any updates to the code are committed to the repository, which allows anyone who is “linked” to the repository to sync their code with the latest changes via one click of a button. A simultaneous, multi-user environment is thus organized for development and proper administration.

Just to reiterate – there are an incredible number of benefits to SVN… too many to mention here.

2. Who should use SVN

Everyone who works with Magento should use SVN. As a rule of thumb, SVN should be used in any significant software development project (unless you use Git).

3. Why SVN should be used

SVN allows multiple developers to build simultaneously in an organized fashion with a detailed history of the progress. This ensures that the live storefront (production environment) is always intricately cared for (read open for business). Every developer has experienced early on in their career the inevitable mistake of removing a file via FTP, only left to realize that file is lost in space and no longer retrievable. But large cocktails are no longer necessary to cope with such an event thanks to SVN. The developer’s life becomes easier; and the client’s business is safer. When used properly, SVN ensures reliability, integrity, speed, and fall-back recovery.

4. Specific things to watch out for with Magento

In our experience, there are a few specifics to watch out for when using SVN with Magento. Without getting too technical, here are a few things we’ve learned along the way:

+ You need to watch out for the caching within Magento. Utilizing SVN:Ignore is the key to allowing the local environment to cache correctly. I would recommend setting SVN to “ignore” for the following (at least) when maintaining separate environments:

• app/etc/local.xml (or use SVN lock instead for this)
• media/catalog/product/cache
• var/

+ If you use Beanstalk then you can streamline SVN managing with the “Deployment” tool within BeanstalkApp’s repository storage.

+ Use a test script. We’ve learned the hard way to stick to a quality test script as we merge different branches into the main SVN repository (used for production). Maintain a staging environment and use the test script from every angle prior to going “live” to production with the new changes.

+ For phases of a project, it helps to create a “branch” for each phase and a staging environment for each branch (assuming the project is large enough to call for it). This makes it easier to rollback and merge updates.

+ We prefer to keep the entire Magento directory maintained via a SVN repo. We do this so that we can upgrade, modify, and perform other changes locally prior to streamlining the changes to the staging and production environments.

5. Bonus: optional tools

At Elias, we fancy apps that make our lives easier. We invest a lot of time researching and trying out new apps to see how well they fit our business. So far we have found a few SVN tools that are worth mentioning. (Note: these may be Apple-specific. Forgive us):

• VersionsApp: A high-quality desktop application that allows one to manage repositories locally for streamlined management of code.
• BeanstalkApp: A sweet as online SVN storage service to host repositories full of code, revisions, and a great interface for management.
• Coda App: A quality code editor that integrates with SVN
• TextMate: Another quality code editor with SVN integration
• MAMP: A personal Mac server with Apache, Mysql and PHP
• VirtualHostX: A virtual hosting utility that works well with MAMP
• VirtualBox: A sweet virtualization product to run multiple operating systems
• Spoon.net: A browser-compatibility testing tool we’re just becoming familiar with

Those of you who are already familiar with SVN know that there is obviously much more to rave about. This post is intended to be a simplified “business use-case” for SVN and explanation of why it is a Magento best practice. We welcome you to chime in with other suggestions for us all to benefit from!

Why: Because Magento rocks and Scene 7 rocks. Together, they can create an inspiring user experience!

Who: For the business who desires real interactivity, and for developers who desire to implement Scene 7 capabilities with Magento.

We recently were approach by a company who knew about Scene 7′s capabilities and they wanted their Magento store to do the following:

1. Replace all product and category images with Scene 7 composited images

2. Allow the user to “build” a custom product based off of product options, and reflect the user selections in the product image

3. Create a unique user experience in their Magento store

Why could this be useful? Well, take a few minutes to learn more about what Scene 7 and Magento integration can do together. Soon, when the project is completed – we’ll have some examples to share.

What was our process in approaching this? Let me give a high-level outline our take on integrating the two systems.

First off, we looked at how we can utilize Scene 7 url’s instead of native Magento URLs. So we decided to override the catalog image helper so we could add custom functions to composite the appropriate URLs to build the image via a specified URL string.

Secondly, we interfaced this custom helper with the Scene 7 backend and some Javascript to build the desired product images. We did this by creating a function inside of the new helper to be able to do all URL string manipulation based off of product options changed by the user on the frontend.

Thirdly, we went through and determined every theme file that needed modifying to use the function that built the Scene 7 URLs and reflect the composited image.

As an overview, we took the following approach:

1. Created the right images in Scene 7 to use in correlation with Magento.

2. Created product options in Magento

3. Overlaid JS to the product options to be used as variables within our Helper function

4. Manipulated the URL string and returned the composited URL to build the product image (based off of the user-selected product options)

The site has yet to go live, though keep in touch with Elias updates and you will see the finished product.

Here’s a head’s up for those interested in Scene 7 integration with Magento.

We’re excited for what Scene 7 brings to the table, and we hope to see it more throughout the Magento community in the near future. In an effort to back that up, we’re going to come out with a 4-part series on a project we recently did to integrate Scene 7 with Magento.

For those interests that are being peaked, feel free to check back with us to catch up on the following:

1. How we integrated the two (a high-level overview of Magento and Scene 7)

2. How to structure Magento for Scene 7

3. How to structure Scene 7 for Magento

We’ll try to keep it as straight-forward and basic as we can, as we’re very excited to see the Magento community start utilizing Scene 7 more.

Cheers,

Lee

Who’s Interested: Informative to the technical gurus
What: An alternative direction on how to show featured products on your Magento storefront home page
Magento Version Relevance: Any
Magento Store Setup: Any

My thought: “Why not let the Admin choose what products to display on the home page like every other category?”

If you’ve been involved in the community dialogue that constantly evolves through the Magento boards, you may have run across a topic mainly focused on ways for developers to display featured products on the home page.

There have been many directions taken with this, including the following as only a few to mention:

1. Install a extension and configure
2. Create an attribute, assign each product a value for that attribute, and then display products based upon the value they contain for that attribute
3. Use the CMS template code to display a certain category

I didn’t want to override any other solutions, but simply offer another approach – one that does not do the following:

• Modify any core code
• Require per-product management
• Install any extension

After my review, I still wanted a way that was more convenient for our client/administrators to be able to manage the products that display on their home page. Going through each product can become cumbersome, so what if they had one specific category that gets displayed all the time, and any products within it show up on the home page? That’s what I went for, and came up with the following:

1. Create a new “structural block” within Magento (see example, thanks Inchoo)
2. Create a (hidden) category within the Magento Admin
3. Modify the structural block to display that category in a specific way
4. Set the Category Id

Here are the files/modifications:

Structural Block

• app/design/frontend/*/*/template/catalog/product/featured-products.phtml

/*
Magento

NOTICE OF LICENSE

This source file is subject to the Academic Free License (AFL 3.0) that is bundled with this package in the file LICENSE_AFL.txt. It is also available through the world-wide-web at this URL:

http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php

If you did not receive a copy of the license and are unable to obtain it through the world-wide-web, please send an email to license@magentocommerce.com so we can send you a copy immediately.

DISCLAIMER

Do not edit or add to this file if you wish to upgrade Magento to newer versions in the future. If you wish to customize Magento for your needs please refer to http://www.magentocommerce.com for more information.

@category   design_default
@package    Mage
@copyright  Copyright (c) 2008 Irubin Consulting Inc. DBA Varien (http://www.varien.com)
@license    http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php  Academic Free License (AFL 3.0)
*/

<?php
/*
Product list template

@see Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List
*/
?>

<?php //$_productCollection=$this->getLoadedProductCollection()

//var_dump($cModel); echo $cModel->getName(); die;

$cat_id = "7"; // category_id for "Featured Products"
$_productCollection = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection')
->addAttributeToSelect(array('name', 'price', 'small_image'), 'inner')
->addCategoryFilter(Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($cat_id));

?>

<?php if(!$_productCollection->count()): ?>
<div class="padder">
<div class="note-msg">
<?php echo $this->__('There are no products matching the selection.') ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php else: ?>

<? // Removed List Mode ?>

<?php // Grid Mode ?>
<?php $_iterator = 0; ?>
<?php $_collectionSize = $_productCollection->count() ?>
<?php //var_dump($_productCollection->count()); ?>
<div class="listing-type-list catalog-listing padder">
<table cellspacing="0" class="generic-product-grid" id="product-list-table">
<?php $i=0; foreach ($_productCollection as $_product): ?>
<?php if ($i++%2==0): ?>
<tr>
<?php endif ?>
<td>
<p class="product-image">
<a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageLabel($_product, 'small_image')) ?>">
<img src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'small_image')->resize(95, 95); ?>" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageLabel($_product, 'small_image')) ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($this->getImageLabel($_product, 'small_image')) ?>" />
</a>
<h5><a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>"><?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?></a></h5>
<?php //echo $this->getPriceHtml($_product, true) ?>

</p>
</td>
<?php if ($i%2==0 	&#37; $i!=$_collectionSize): ?>
</tr>
<?php endif ?>
<?php endforeach ?>
<?php for($i;$i%2!=0;$i++): ?>
<td class="empty-product">	&#37;</td>
<?php endfor ?>
<?php if ($i%2==0): ?>
</tr>
<?php endif ?>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">decorateTable('product-list-table')</script>
</div>

<?php endif; ?>

• app/design/frontend/*/*/template/cms/home.phtml (modify path/to/your/cms/page/home.phtml to be specific to your needs)

<?php //Home Page View ?> <div>
<?php //display featured products ?>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('featured.products') ?>
</div>

• app/design/frontend/*/*/layout/page/page.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
<!-- Default layout, loads most of the pages -->
<!-- Insert into existing page.xml file, do not replace this with your current file -->
<default>
<block type="core/text_list" name="featured.products" as="featured.products"/>
</default>
</layout>

Create new Category

This ccould be called “Featured Products”) and set the Admin->Catalog->Manage Categories->specificCategoryName->General Information->”Is Active” = “No”.

Display structural block

Either via CMS page or .phtml page through the CMS page:
(modify path/to/your/cms/page/home.phtml to be specific to your needs)

• CMS Page: {{block type=”core/template” template=”path/to/your/cms/page/home.phtml”}}
• .phtml page: inside CMS page->Custom Design:

<reference name="content">
<remove name="cms_page" />
<block name="home_page" type="core/template" template="path/to/your/cms/page/home.phtml">
<block name="featured.products" type="catalog/product_list" template=
"catalog/product/featured-products.phtml" />
</block>
</reference>
<reference name="root">
<action method="setTemplate">
<template>page/1column.phtml</template>
</action>
</reference>

Set Your Category Id

Now you should be able to checkout the code in the featured-products.phtml, and match the “7″ to your actual product category id. (see category id within the Admin->Catalog->Manage Categories->Your Category).

Now, any product inside that category gets displayed on the home page!

Please feel free to download the structural block files and place into your theme structure relative to the root Magento directory.

And take a look at the site we’ve used it on with our client, Keramikos Kitchen.

Let us know your thoughts!

Appreciative,
Lee

Magento‘s native RSS capability + Mailchimp’s RSS-to-email feature = automated inventory alerts via email.

Genius!

When you double click on the knife set, then you get this enlarged image:

Images need to be sized specifically according to their Magento store location in order to pull this off. Here is what Naseem had to say:

In order to achieve the best results the image should be sized to 600 x 600. This size allows for a centered image, zoom functionality and click to enlarge is not overblown. If you notice in the knife sets I incorporated into the art a “click here to close”. Simple solution for people that can’t figure out how to close the screen.

Braveheart was on this afternoon.  One of my favorite scenes is when Wallace and his men first meet the crazy Irishman.  Two guys show up in the woods to join a movement.  One is normal, well-spoken, and blends in initially.  He even presents a present to Wallace…how thoughtful.  The other guy is crazy.  He puts a knife to someone’s throat (immediately pointing out a lapse in security).  The next scene plays out with an unanticipated twist: the crazy guy saves Wallace’s life from the normal guy’s assassination attempt.

At Elias we could use a few developers to help us grow.  We are looking for the crazy loyal type, not the nice stab-you-in-the-back type.  Do you have an island?

Since we are small, every penny counts and every minute saved is valuable to us.  Our objective was to create a form on our website where new potential clients can submit a request for more information.  We have been slammed lately with currect clients (a good thing), but feel like we are not able to be as responsive as we would like to be with people who are trying to make a decision on who to use for their Magento ecommerce installation and Magento customization (a bad thing).  A CRM tool was desperately needed in order to collect the new contacts, file them in on-demand software, trigger an immediate email to let them know we will follow up soon, and send a notification email to me with the info that they filled out on the form.  Turns out this was harder to find than I expected.  Enter Zoho.

Other companies out there do this sort of thing, Zoho just does it for $25/month/user.  So far I have customized the lead fields, mapped them to a form, and pasted the HTML to our “Request a Quote” landing page.  Also, the software is set to automatically send me an email with the completed fields and create a follow up task due the next day (screenshot of admin below).  Next week I plan to set up the triggered email response to the interested client.

Hopefully this is helpful to you if you are looking for a CRM application.  It would be interesting to know what everyone else is using to manage their client relationships and why they selected it.  Anyone have a better find than Zoho?

A few very cool Magento features:

• Add-to-compare
• Faceted navigation discovery
• Zoom feature
• Multiple product image support (again with zoom capability)

Magento is not for everyone.  It requires a working knowledge of the following to use effectively:

• Apache web server
• SOAP
• PHP
• XML
• SQL
• XHTML
• CSS

The bottom line is that although Magento is open source, it acts and looks like the best of commercial systems…

Check out Armando’s review and drop us a note at Elias.  We can help you with technical aspects of  a Magento install, Magento modifiy, Magento module, and Magento customization.