5
Viewing Error Backtraces for Ambiguous Error Messages
There are many times when working with the Magento frontend that I get very ambiguous error message. Here is a screenshot of the type of error I'm talking about:
I usually just search the entire codebase for the error message code, locate the place where the exception is getting caught, and then temporarily modify the code to Mage::log() the following data: $e->getMessage(), $e->getTraceAsString(), etc...
I just came across an exception... Read more
Posted on March 19, 2010
Posted under Magento Development by Erik Hansen
The Evaluation Process: An Introduction to the Perceived Cost/Benefit Relationship
Before I drill down into the actual Value Presentation, it is important to have a complete understanding of the relationship between Perceived Value and Perceived Cost, which I briefly mentioned in the previous article on Traffic Quality.
We are evaluating things all the time. We don't even recognize much of the evaluation that takes place. It's usually automatic, subconscious.
This process of evaluation can be broken down into the rising... Read more
Posted on March 16, 2010
Posted under Magento by Kurt Theobald
33
Editing Magento's Footer Links
To follow up on our post about editing Magento's top links, I thought I might as well write an article about editing the footer links while I'm at it. I'd recommend reading our post about using a local.xml file before getting started on this post. This post might not make much sense until you read it. [NOTE: This specific example assumes you are using the blank theme. Layout handles may differ from theme to theme.]
In local.xml:
<?xml... Read more
Posted on March 2, 2010
Posted under Development, Magento Development by Kevin Kirchner
68
Editing Magento's Top Links (The Better Way)
You might need to read the post about using a local.xml file before this post makes much sense.
We offer all our clients a completely customized design from scratch, which means changing anything - including those annoying defaulted top links. This post will show you how to edit your top links (without editing core layout files which may change when you update Magento) by utilizing a local.xml file. You can even add your own custom links... Read more
Posted on February 24, 2010
Posted under Development, Magento Development by Kevin Kirchner
1
Optimizing Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate: Analyzing and Improving Traffic Quality
Variable #1: Traffic Quality
If you sell pencil sharpeners, and most of your traffic is redirected from a Youtube video that shows a guy balancing a pencil sharpener on his nose, it's not very likely that the visitors to your site are interested in purchasing pencil sharpeners. Your bounce rate will likely be sky-high. I recently saw a massive increase in traffic to one of our client's sites, increasing their monthly traffic volume by... Read more
Posted on February 23, 2010
Posted under conv, E-Commerce, E-Commerce, E-Commerce Optimization, Magento, traffic, traffic quality by Kurt Theobald
1
Optimizing Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate: The Two Conversion Criteria
E-commerce traffic is worthless if you are not converting any of your traffic into sales. The percentage of visits that result in a purchase is called the conversion rate. So much emphasis is put on generating traffic, but it's only the first step in building e-commerce revenue and profitability. It is typically very expensive from a holistic resource perspective (money, time, focus, etc.) to generate traffic, so to pay no attention to... Read more
Posted on February 23, 2010
Posted under conversion rate optimization, E-Commerce, E-Commerce, E-Commerce Optimization, Magento, revenue optimization by Kurt Theobald
161
The Better Way to Modify Magento Layouts
In this article, I'm going to be covering what I believe to be a very effective way of modifying the layout of any Magento theme.
For several of the first Magento themes I built, I copied the layout files from the default or blank theme into the custom theme layout folder. I would then modify the layout files directly, editing or commenting out content in files like: catalog.xml, page.xml, checkout.xml, etc... I never liked editing these... Read more
Posted on February 23, 2010
Posted under Magento Development by Erik Hansen
1
The Smart Method of Loading Collections
One fairly unknown feature of Magento collections is that you actually don't have to call ->load() on a collection before being able to access the items in the collection. So you can do this:
$orders = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection')->addAttributeToSelect('*');
# The load method is not necessary, as iterating through a collection automatically loads it, if it hasn't already been loaded.
# $orders->load();... Read more
Posted on February 10, 2010
Posted under Magento Development by Erik Hansen
1
Saving the Value of a Specific Attribute from a Model
In Magento, it's very easy to save all the data in a model by running $model->save();. (Note: In this blog post, model refers to an EAV model, not a flat resource model) This saves all the attributes for the model to their respective attribute tables. There are times when saving the value of just one of the model attributes is desirable. A couple cases where you'd want to do this:
You've been passed a model from an event, and you aren't sure... Read more
Posted on February 10, 2010
Posted under Magento Development by Erik Hansen
1
PHP Single vs. Double Quotes
For a long time, I've been a proponent of using single-quotes as opposed to double-quotes when assigning string literals (strings containing no variables) to a variable (eg: $var = 'string'; VS $var = "string").
I just did some research to find out how much (if any) impact using single-vs-double quotes had on performance. I took the code from this blog post: http://spindrop.us/2007/03/03/php-double-versus-single-quotes/ modified the MAX... Read more
Posted on February 7, 2010
Posted under PHP by Erik Hansen
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