Magento First Steps - Resources, Guides, Tutorials, Tips

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.net/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 I'm afraid - no one replies to anything. It has 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 extensible it is.

Good Blogs

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

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

http://activecodeline.net/

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

Useful things

These things will bite you, so I'll save you the pain.

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()
);

//OR

$cookieParams = array(
‘lifetime’ => $cookie->getLifetime(),
‘path’ => $cookie->getPath(),
//’domain’ => $cookie->getConfigDomain(),
//’secure’ => $cookie->isSecure(),
//’httponly’ => $cookie->getHttponly()
);


OR


1.Open “Varien.php” file Location “app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Session\Abstract”. 2.Find and comment the bellow code

if (!$cookieParams['httponly']) {
       unset($cookieParams['httponly']);
       if (!$cookieParams['secure']) {
           unset($cookieParams['secure']);
           if (!$cookieParams['domain']) {
               unset($cookieParams['domain']);
           }
       }
   }

   if (isset($cookieParams['domain'])) {
       $cookieParams['domain'] = $cookie->getDomain();
   }


Back end running really slow, blank this file.

\app\design\adminhtml\default\default\template\notification\window.phtml
Graph not showing in back end

Change getChartUrl(false) to getChartUrl(true) in

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