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Magento Commerce

Scene7 Integration With Magento eCommerce

Lee Taylor · Jul 6, 2009 · 15 Comments

What: Straightforward overview on our approach for integrating Scene 7 with Magento eCommerce.

At ecombusinesshub offers a detailed look at dropshipping. You’ll learn what it is, how it works, and how to set up a dropshipping business.

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 and have a better understanding of the self service definition

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.

Magento and Scene 7 Integration: 3 Part Series

Lee Taylor · Jun 2, 2009 · 5 Comments

Hey All,

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

Magento Featured Products: A More Convenient Way To Display Featured Products On The Home Page

Lee Taylor · May 25, 2009 · 54 Comments

About: How To Show / Display Featured Products On The Home Page (Conveniently)

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

How to Automate Inventory Alerts via Email using Magento & Mailchimp

Josh Colter · May 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Ben from Mailchimp.com posted an interesting idea yesterday:

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

Genius!

Product Image Sizing for Magento

Josh Colter · May 11, 2009 · 3 Comments

During the recent launch of Keramikoskitchen.com, our client, Naseem Jarjoura, wanted to allow for product images to be enlarged when double-clicked.  For some reason the image would just not load correctly so that it fit within its allotted area correctly.  Here is an example of what Naseem wanted to do:

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.

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