Here’s a more thorough write up and Magento’s official announcement. I was really impressed to see that the word “Magento” is now searched more than “eCommerce” which is a little mind-blowing by itself and interesting to compare the search trail for the old dog oscommerce. Hmm – maybe that includes a lot of people searching for magento the color?

I would like to note this is just a starting point and there are a lot of points to cover, some that won’t make it into this post and multiple posts will follow. If you have something to add please fell free to leave a comment.

For the Print Designer Creating the Design and HTML

1. Don’t Export HTML from Photoshop
   I have seen this time and time again, and with the “occasional” exception of HTML emails, this is not what you should do. There are multiple issues with this method of creating web pages. First: The search engines (and site visitors) only see big pictures held in place by a convoluted set of tables. The web’s purpose is to present multiple types of content on a page like images, body text, headlines, lists, video, flash, and all kinds of media. when Photoshop creates html it sticks all of your design’s text into images which essentially hides the content from the search engines. Also by using tables to hold the page together it obstructs the mark up and makes it harder for search engines to find any text on your pages (if there is any). Some may say “We’ll just add alt tags with the content”. Alt tags are for image descriptions not body copy or any kind of content. This still hurts you page rank. if you have not learned enough to code up your own page yet, build your site in Dreamweaver’s design mode. This will get you started to bridge the gap and eventually be able to code your own html, and css.
2. Tables are Tables, not Div’s
   Tables used as structural elements on the web page had there day when CSS was far from being implemented. However CSS is here and it empowers the designer to new levels. Where do you use tables? When the deign has a data table of course. One thing that really helps to code up pure css designs are CSS frameworks like 960 and Blueprint. They have PSD and IA templates to help design as well as HTML generators to make your life easier.
   
3. I Don’t Know How To Code HTML and CSS
   It is time to learn, the future is the web, heck the present is the web! It is really not that hard once you get going, there are a million places to learn on the net. Here are a couple of them:
   • http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
   • http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/
   • http://css-tricks.com/what-beautiful-html-code-looks-like/
   • If you want to pay to learn: Lynda.com
   • http://csshtmltutorial.com/
   • http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/develop-css/from-mess-to-css

THE QUICK ANSWER: Put your resets at the very beginning of your html-elements.css file

We at Sharpdot recently completed a large series of websites using Drupal. After months of designing comps, coding them up, adding all of the special functionality, we discovered some style issues (and it wasn’t just IE problems this time!) After quite some time of trying to figure out what was going on, we discovered it was that the Zen theme does not add reset styles to there theme!

Unfortunately there has been an argument to not add reset styles in the Drupal Zen theme. This is quite concerning, mainly because our mission as a web shop is to code our sites up to be pixel perfect to the PSD’s and comps of the project. The arguments I have seen against resets are that they want the ability to style things quickly without being hampered by having to restyle all of the typographical elements and just let the browser do the work with it’s defaults. Well this can create many problems especially between  Windows and Mac platforms and the differences in the way they render their text. Our standard operating procedure is to have resets at the beginning of all styles them restore defaults to the page elements. This approach normally works great, however we are dealing with Drupal here, and Zen’s sub-theme approach.

So where do you start? Well my first thoughts were to add a new resets.css file to the theme and include it using the .info file in the sub-theme like you are supposed to do for JavaScripts and IE hack stylesheets. Well after doing this the styles kept on being added after other elements I was trying to reset first in the stylesheet order. After more research and trial and error, I found that reset styles are supposed to go into your html-elements.css file at the beginning of the code. For some reason this is the way the Zen Drupal theme people made it work. I am sure there is some argument out there for it, but there you go it’s Drupal, where nothing is that simple, but it can do just about anything.

One thing we have built here at Sharpdot is a library of starting themes, boilerplate’s and functionality which we can use to streamline our development as well as keep a consistency on all projects. One of the next things I have on my list is to make a Drupal Zen theme boilerplate with our edits available (with CSS resets!), check back for that.

These are the accompaning files: (Please reference this file if you have any quetion about the code examples below. The WYSIWYG editor was messing things up. mainly “&’s” and “empty()’s” )
1. Full Code Example

First we are going to have to modify the the adapter used to save/update products during the import process. The file used is located here: “/app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Model/Convert/Adapter/Product.php“. Since we are going to be modifying this file we should extend it so we don’t change any core files. There are plenty of articles that detail how to extend/customize Magento files so I will not go into it.

First lets tackle adding multiple gallery images. These are images that appear on the products detail page below the main image. We will be making all our edits in the Product.php file mentioned in the previous paragraph. Find the SaveRow method. In this method find the code where Magento saves the products images(should be similar to the following code and around line 630).
[sourcecode language='php']
$imageData = array();
foreach ($this->_imageFields as $field) {
if (!empty($importData[$field]) && $importData[$field] != ‘no_selection’) {
if (!isset($imageData[$importData[$field]])) {
$imageData[$importData[$field]] = array();
}
$imageData[$importData[$field]][] = $field;
}
}

foreach ($imageData as $file => $fields) {
try {
$product->addImageToMediaGallery(Mage::getBaseDir(‘media’) . DS . ‘import’ . $file, $fields);
}
catch (Exception $e) {}
}
[/sourcecode]

First thing we will do is change the addImageToMediaGallery so that when it saves the image it is not excluded(saves you from having to re-edit the products after import to make the images appear.).
[sourcecode language='php']

foreach ($imageData as $file => $fields) {
try {
// changed to not mark imported images as ‘excluded’ – see http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/6971/P15/ and http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/40007/
//$product->addImageToMediaGallery(Mage::getBaseDir(‘media’) . DS . ‘import’ . $file, $fields);
$product->addImageToMediaGallery(Mage::getBaseDir(‘media’) . DS . ‘import’ . $file, $fields, false, false);
}
catch (Exception $e) {}
}
[/sourcecode]

Now we can add the code to import multiple gallery images. Just below the code above add this new code:
[sourcecode language='php']
//Now add each gallery image.
if (!empty($importData['gallimg'])) {
//$importData['gallimg'] should be a list of images to import seperated by “;”
$images = explode(“;”, $importData['gallimg']);
foreach($images as $image){
//Don’t add field for gallimg’s
try {
//made second param null so it is not added as the main image, small or thumb. just added to the gallery
$product->addImageToMediaGallery(Mage::getBaseDir(‘media’) . DS . ‘import’ . trim($image), NULL, false, false);
}
catch (Exception $e) {}

}
}
[/sourcecode]
In order to use this new code you need to add a new column to your import spreadsheet. Label the column “gallimg”. This needs to be a list of the images you want to import separated by a “;”.
Now that was not too hard was it?

Now we can address removing images during the import/update process. In order to remove all the images you will need to continue modifying the saveRow method. Add the following code just above the code we previously edited.

[sourcecode language='php']
//MRD added to remove all images for product before uploading new images
if(isset($importData['remove_all_images']) && $importData['remove_all_images']==”yes” ){
//check if gallery attribute exists then remove all images if it exists
//Get products gallery attribute
$attributes = $product->getTypeInstance()->getSetAttributes();
if (isset($attributes['media_gallery'])) {
$gallery = $attributes['media_gallery'];
//Get the images
$galleryData = $product->getMediaGallery();
foreach($galleryData['images'] as $image){
//If image exists
if ($gallery->getBackend()->getImage($product, $image['file'])) {
$gallery->getBackend()->removeImage($product, $image['file']);
}
}
}
#$gallery->clearMediaAttribute($product, array(‘image’,’small_image’,'thumbnail’));
}
//END Remove Images
[/sourcecode]

To utilize the code we just created you will need to add the “remove_all_images” column to your spreadsheet and set the value to “yes”.

This was written using Magento version 1.2.1 so your files could be slightly different, but should still work if you follow the instruction. If you have any problems please leave a productive comment and I will see how I can help.

Here is a link to the modules page: Delivery Date Plugin

My problem(Error) began because I was calling the parent method then was setting the order on the collection again, and Magento did not like it.

[sourcecode language='php']
public function setCollection($collection)
{
parent::setCollection($collection);
//The next three lines were what were causing the problem.
//Because setOrder was called in the parent function it threw the error when it was called again.
#if ($this->getCurrentOrder()) {
# $this->getCollection()->setOrder($this->getCurrentOrder(), $this->getCurrentDirection());
#}
//Custom code went here
return $this;
}
[/sourcecode]

Sharpdot re-designed and implemented 4 websites for the library system to bring a new consistency, usability and identity-focus that speaks clearly to this vision. Built using Drupal, the new sites wrap in powerful content management with the flexibility to grow to meet the changing needs of the future.

The sites are the University Library, Goizueta Business School Library, Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library and MARBL.

The holdings of the nine Emory University Libraries include more than 3.1 million print and electronic volumes, 55,000-plus electronic journals, and internationally renowned special collections. The Robert W. Woodruff Library, also known as the University Library, is the central hub in the library system.

Today’s release, the third of four launches this week, marks another step toward a more unified web presence for the library system. Stay posted for tomorrow’s final launch and in the meantime visit the site.

Through it’s databases, guides, career resources and other search tools, the Goizueta Business School’s Library provides access to the information needed to support the rigorous demands of a top-tier business school.

Today’s launch is the second of four scheduled for this week, culminating in a more unified web presence for the Emory University Library system. Stay posted for the next two sites to launch and in the meantime visit the site.

Better known as MARBL, this library houses collections that span more than 800 years of history with particular depth in modern literature, African American history, and the history of Georgia and the South.

The new site, built using Drupal, is the first of four set to launch this week, culminating in a new web presence for the Emory University Libraries. Stay posted for the next three sites to launch and in the meantime visit the site.

The date filters are great. They look like they’ll be a big help when searching for tech solutions especially when you want to only see fixes and how-tos for the most current versions of wordpress / drupal etc. They are available already but it takes a few clicks to get to it so this makes it a whole lot easier. It’ll be nice to see this go live for real sometime soon.

At first I got bogged down trying to get it to work with some url rewrites in the .htaccess file. It seemed logical but it didn’t work because passenger does it’s thing before .htaccess even kicks in. Besides, the best approach is to bypass passenger completely for that directory – better for optimizing and is really more true to what we were trying to setup.

After digging I discovered the ‘PassengerEnabled’ directive! I know RTFM. Just set PassengerEnabled off for that directory and we’re golden.

Now how to fit it into cpanel but just for this domain? Not as simple as it sounds. Editing the httpd.conf is of course NOT the right solution. Cpanel does expose some parts of the apache configuration in the admin but it’s not vhost specific so again it would affect all sites when I just wanted to change one. RTFM again and you’ll see there are some manual ways to insert things directly into the vhost. You have to manually create a series of directories (the userdata one at the top of the chain is not there by default) and put an override file named anything.conf in the right place.

In my setup i created the file override.conf here:

/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/<vhost account number>/<cpanel user name>/<domain name>/override.conf

And put this in it (/drupal is the folder i want to run php in).

<Location /blog>
PassengerEnabled off
</Location>

And now one more hitch…

Running /scripts/verify_vhost_includes like it says to in the cpanel docs said that my vhost file had an error!!! It said PassengerEnabled was not a valid directive. I ended up just giving it a shot anyways and was pleased to find that it worked just fine! I suspect that cpanel just doesn’t know this directive becuase it is specific to passenger. So you run:

/scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=<cpanel user name>


to rebuild the vhosts file for this user and restarts apache and voila!

Whew

Here’s the writeups on all my apps and ninite

Here’s some more details… http://buytaert.net/whitehouse-gov-using-drupal

Here is the video…  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHoDsZDMH_Y&feature=player_embedded

All of the sudden I could not edit categories. The problem is that when I viewed the site it showed as “localsiteupgrade.com” the “U” in Upgrade got converted to “u” lowercase. This difference in the base url set in magento and the url in the browser was causing SID to appear in the url. This was breaking ajax urls like the ones used to edit categories. to fix the issue I just had to set the base site url to “localsiteupdate.com” like it was showing in the browser address bar. Durring my research I ran accross other posts showing how to use htaccess files to make sure that visitors were redirected to the proper url.

Hope this saves someone else some time!

So today they both took a nap – in fact they’re right over there on the couch – and while they’re snoozing I thought I’d give this a shot. I went to the soas homepage ( http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick ) and followed the instructions there and am just waiting while the live usb creator does it’s thing ( https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ ). That live usb creator looks like a great little thing by the way. can make your usb stick a live bootable linux os. I’m trying it on our 2GB usb stick from the office. if it works I guess I’ll have to get another one for work.

Ok great – looks like it’s complete – i’ll post later with an update!

UPDATE

Ok it’s a compaq presario 1694 and it’s running win 98 but it looks like it is booting up into windows after all! it’s not recognizing the usb drive though – looks like it wants a driver. need to add the usb to the boot options…

UPDATE 2

Things have stalled out mostly becuase the dang laptop is so old. it won’t run the stick because it wants drivers – win98 didn’t automatically handle drivers like things do now remember . there’s no ethernet jack – only a phone jack – so it’s proving difficult to get online and transfer files to it. Tried running a live ubuntu cd and that didn’t work – i think because it only has 64MB of RAM and the ubuntu live cd needs more than that. I mean this thing is so old it has a floppy disk drive in it. Not giving up though – i’m still hoping to get some newer version of linux installed on it to handle the usb drivers and then i should be in business. more to come!

Also, after digging into it more I think that the memory requirements for running