Beginning Magento development

Question

I'm starting a project e-commerce site with Magento. I've been using the Microsoft Stack for a while now, but I'm excited about working with PHP.

Before I really dig in, I need some resources. I've found the tutorials on Magento's site, but they were pretty sparse. I'd like to hear what Magento developers here are doing, so I have a few questions:

1. What development environment are you using? I'm considering using Eclipse / PDT plugin with Subversion for source control.

2. What are some references you use when you need to find out how to do something using Magento? i.e. blogs, books, tutorials...

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi John

I was in the same boat about 2 months ago, I'm a MS developer and have had to pick Magento up.

Dev Enviroment

Iv been using eclipse and notepad++, and just using tortoise SVN outside of eclipse.

I did try the Zend Studio as an IDE (Magento is based on the Zend Framework), and the SVN plugin for eclispe, but didnt find either particularity enjoyable to use. I have generally found there is a little more friction than we are used to with Visual studio, thats why I use notepad++, its often easier to get things done out side of the IDE. With magento you have to, create a copy of file you want to override and put them in a different folder, so you spend alot of time messing around in the file system, out side of the IDE.

References

• Install guide for windows http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/general/installing_on_windows_with_xampp_and_wamp

• Good video/pdf describing templates/ui http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/screencasts/designers-guide-1/view http://www.magentocommerce.com/design_guide/articles/how-magento-builds-content

• Magento is build on the Zend framework. there are afew views on here, the MVC aspect is very similar to .net MVC http://framework.zend.com/

• I found it very useful to try and write my own custom module: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/how-to/create-payment-method-module http://activecodeline.com/writing-a-custom-module-in-magento-detailed-walktrough/

• This book is pretty good - only 160 odd pages but overs some good area.

The magento forums are rubbish im afraid - no one replies to anything. It taken me hours to figure some little things out. I would just say stick at it, the code can appear to be very fragmented, but as you get used to it you will appreciate how modular and extenable it is..

Good Blogs

http://www.westwideweb.com/wp/category/magento/

http://inchoo.net/category/ecommerce/magento/

http://activecodeline.com/

http://www.exploremagento.com/category/magento

Usful things These things will bite you, so ill save you the pain.

1.Problems logging in to admin panel after installation:

http://www.casualcommerce.com/2009/02/magento-notes-fix-for-admin-login-problem/

app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract and open up varien.php, and comment out

// set session cookie params
session_set_cookie_params(
$this->getCookie()->getLifetime(),
$this->getCookie()->getPath() //remove this after putting on server (leave the comma)   ,
//$this->getCookie()->getDomain(),
//$this->getCookie()->isSecure(),
//$this->getCookie()->getHttponly()
);

2.Back end running really slow, blank this file.

\app\design\adminhtml\default\default\template\notification\window.phtml

3 .Graph not showing in back end

change getChartUrl(false) to getChartUrl(true) in

\app\design\adminhtml\default\default\template\dashboard\graph.phtml

Answer 2

Total self promotion warning (I think that's allowed on StackOverflow, if not my apologies). I've been writing some weblog posts about Magento. They're oriented more towards a PHP MVC developer coming into Magento, but you may find them useful.

• Magento Development Enviornment
• Magento’s Class Instantiation Abstraction and Autoload
• Clearing the Magento Cache
• Reinstalling Magento Modules
• Magento Front Controller

If you can only ready one I'd recommend the awkwardly named Magento’s Class Instantiation Abstraction and Autoload, which covers a core abstraction that a lot of developers stumble over when they first come to Magento.

Answer 3

Pactpub.com/free - Begginer's Guide to Magento - Book write a blog and rec. free copy