Picture the scene – all is going well, the site has launched and is happily taking orders just fine.. until.. one day, one order comes in strange and the packaging hasn’t been taken into account on the PayPal end. But it only happens once so you hope it was a glitch and move on.

Then it happens again, a few orders down the line.

You try to track the problem, but can’t recreate the error consistently.

Well… the problem and solution have been found! The error only seems to occur when a customer registers and uses PayPal standard – this causes PayPal to not take for the shipping, and so Magento sees the full amount hasn’t been taken for and doesn’t send an order confirmation. Very much less than ideal. We found the solution whilst browsing the Magento forum – you can see the original thread and solution as posted on the forum by clicking here.

The problem? Just five errant files:

• app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Helper/Data.php
• app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Model/Standard.php
• app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Model/Api/Standard.php
• app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Model/Api/Abstract.php

Now, you might think it would be as easy as just replacing those core files, but there is one important thing to remember: you should never edit core files. It’s a better practice to create local copies and one we recommend at ecommerce web design.

Step 1 – Open up your app/code folder, and create a new folder called “local”.

Step 2 – Duplicate the exact folder structure for the new files within the local folder, so the first file would be at app/code/local/Mage/PayPal/Model/Helper/Data.php

Step 3 – Upload your new local files. Bingo. Thanks for reading our latest Magento Blog!

Download the fixed PayPal files

Relatively easy on the surface, and, granted, application  this is a question that comes up fairly often – so I thought I’d answer it. This is a topic we’ve covered before with a slightly different method on our Magento Blog at Ecommerce web design, and you can read Adam’s earlier post here.

How do I display custom product attributes on my Magento product page?

<?php echo $_product->getClassavail() ?>

Problem one: It’s not working!

Ah, but is it a dropdown in the admin section? If it is, you’ll need slightly different code:

Display custom dropdown product attributes:

<?php echo  $_product->getAttributeText('classavail')  ?>

I tried this out in the category view page, and it works there too so go forth and use attributes!

A common problem that seems to come up quite often these days, seems to arise after the installation of new extensions – dread imposing Access Denied in the Magento Admin, especially the System-> Configuration area. Don’t worry though – it’s annoying but not an sign that your immediate sign that your new extension has broken your installation and there is a quick and simple way to fix the issue.

Simply go to System -> Permissions -> Roles.

Then, presuming you’re an Adminstrator and having the problem, click on Administators. Just click on Save Role and you’re done! Panic over.

Thanks for reading the magento blog at ecommerce web design!

Here at ecommerce website design we are starting to piece together the more useful blogs that we have on our magento blog and are determined to create easily installable magento extensions.

Ones that we currently plan to turn into extensions are the following:

• Our Free Samples solution
• Our Special Offers block (remade with magento friendly JQuery)
• Quick Discreet Navigation (NEW)
• JQuery Friendly Slider
• Category Listing with Lowest Item Price for homepage
• SEO Improvements Pack – Version 1
• Quick Contact Form with Prefill
• Login/Logout switchable button

These are just the features that we have come up with at the moment that we feel should be converted into extensions rather than hacks. If you think of any more then please let us know by commenting on our blog.

Myself (Rob), Adam and our new blogger Luci will continue to strive and strain to work with magento and fiddle with it as much as humanly possible. When we come up with our hacks we will eventually run them as extensions for everybody to enjoy!

Only one more thing to mention. Under duress we are probably going to roll out our extensions under the guise of Magento Fox. It was his decision and with those teeth we really didn’t want to argue with him…

All right, so you have a great ecommerce web design -it’s a little bit different, a little bit none-standard… it’s the little things that count. Little things like.. the top links. My Account, My Cart, Checkout…

But how can you change them? Well, my first thought was the XML files, and then the CSV files – it seems like most things I need these days are those places.
There’s an easier solution!
Log in to your Magento Admin system and go to:

System: Configuration -> Advanced -> Developer -> Translate Inline -> Enable for Frontend : Yes

Once this is enabled, go back to your store and you should see various sections of text outlined in a red dotted line. Everything that has an outline is editable – including the top links.

Hover over the ‘My Cart’ link and click on the little book that appears. Rename it to whatever you like, I’m going to call my ‘My Bag’ and enter that into at least the lower box ‘Link Label’. Hit Submit.

Add a product to your cart and repeat the process. This is where, if you don’t want the number of items to be displayed, you remove the (% ..) from the box.

Add another product to your cart and repeat the process again – this is so when customers have more than one item in their carts it also changes.

You’re done! I cleared the cache’s on my installation and the changes remained so don’t worry about that either. Thanks for reading our Magento blog!