Website Design Peterborough, Jigowatt - Magento Web Design, UK » Chris

Add Magento Category Links to your Footer Template

Chris — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:56:24 +0000

A useful bit of code for those who want to start optimising their website towards visitors and importantly Google for great SEO.

In your footer template file add the following code snippet where you want to display a list of your Magento categories.

app/design/frontend/default/your_theme/template/page/html/footer.phtml

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$helper = $this->helper('catalog/category') ?>
foreach ($helper->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>

echo Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->setData($_category->getData())->getUrl(); ?>" title=" echo $_category->getName() ?>"> echo $_category->getName() ?>

endforeach ?>

This modification is Magento 1.4 compatible.

AJAX Contact Form; Add / Validate Checkboxes

Chris — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:12:08 +0000

For all our AJAX Contact Form customers on CodeCanyon, here’s a quick tutorial on how to add / validate checkboxes.

As some have found, the standard Javascript .val() request does not work with checkboxes, for this reason we’ll need to add a quick function to our Javascript handling file, here’s one we made earlier… add this at line 14 of jquery.jigowatt.js

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function getCheckedValue(field) {

field = $('#' + field)
txt = ""
for (i = 0; i < field.length; i++) {
if (field[i].checked) { txt = field[i].value }
}

if (txt == "") { return "0" } else { return "1" }

}

Using this function will return a ’1′ value if the checkbox is ticked and a ’0′ if it isn’t, this will make it very easy for you to validate in the contact.php file.

Note: If for any reason you need the checkbox’s value returned for validation you need to replace

1	if (txt == "") { return "0" } else { return "1" }

with..

1	if (txt == "") { return "0" } else { return txt + " " }

Now you just need to add the value to the post as normal.. aprox line 30 with the above function inserted

1	checkbox: getCheckedValue('checkbox'),

For your reference, our HTML for the Checkbox looks like this..

1 2	<br /> <input type="checkbox" name="checkbox" id="checkbox" value="Milk"> Milk<br />

And that’s it on our part, now with some validation you’ll be well on your way to passing checkbox variables.

AJAX Contact Form; Add or Remove Custom Fields

Chris — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:21:56 +0000

In a burst of WordPress fever we decided to write another blog post to help all of our ThemeForest / CodeCanyon customers.

Alongside our ThemeForest and CodeCanyon success comes Customer Support. We get a lot of questions from users needing a point in the right direction so we thought we’d make it easier for us both and explain how to add custom fields to our ever popular AJAX Contact Form.

Add a Custom Field Tutorial

In this example we’re going to add a new simple text field (Your Height) which we want all users to fill in (a required, validated field).

Step One

Firstly, backup backup and backup again, once you’ve done that we need to edit our HTML to include our new field, we’re going to add this one under the ‘Your Name’ field.

In the included index.html file find the following lines..

1	<input name="name" type="text" id="name" size="30" value="" />

Below it we’re going to insert our new text field..

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<br />
<label for=height accesskey=H><span class="required">*</span> Your Height (cm)</label>
<input name="height" type="text" id="height" size="30" value="" />

Now save and close index.html, that’s the first step out of the way.

Step Two

This is an often overlooked though most important step of this tutorial.

We’re going to edit the Javascript handler (the AJAX part) of the contact form.

In the js/jquery.jigowatt.js file find the following line..

1	name: $('#name').val(),

For this example add the following code immediately below.. (please note the comma , after the line – this is important)

1	height: $('#height').val(),

Once done the section of the code should look like this..

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name: $('#name').val(),
height: $('#height').val(),
email: $('#email').val(),

Save and close jquery.jigowatt.js, that’s the second step done!

Step Three

The third and final step! We’re going to add our new field to the PHP form handler. This will validate it’s contents and put it into the e-mail.

In contact.php find the following line (aprox line 5)

1	$name = $_POST['name'];

Add the following code immediately below..

1	$height = $_POST['height'];

In contact.php find the following lines (aprox line 13)

1 2	echo ' Attention! You must enter your name. '; exit();

Add the following code immediately below..

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} else if(trim($height) == '') {
echo '

Attention! Please enter a your height.

';
exit();
} else if(!is_numeric($height)) {
echo '

Attention! Your height can only contain digits.

';
exit();

This piece of code checks that the user has firstly entered a value, and the further checks that they have only entered a numeric value. The only variables within this are $height and the error message you want to display if it finds a discrepancy.

And finally, place our validated variable into the e-mail.

Find the following (aprox line 70)

1	You have been contacted by $name with regards to $subject

Replace this with the following (notice the sentence change to include our new $height variable)

1	You have been contacted by $name who is $height cm tall with regards to $subject

And that’s it, you’ve just added a new field to your AJAX Contact Form! Upload the changed files and give it a test. Any questions, feedback or suggestions please use our comments box below.

Introducing our Acronis / RAID Web Server

Chris — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:38:50 +0000

Despite being busier than ever at Jigowatt HQ we thought we’d sneak in some time to introduce our new Acronis / RAID server setup (we don’t expect that to mean anything until you’ve read a little more).

We’ve added yet another dedicated server to our already gluttenous collection; what better time to let you all know the workings, secrets and latest new features of our server range.

Acronis

Acronis is a comprehensive backup solution which also minimises downtime to meet our strict Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs).

But what does it do you may ask..?

It allows us to operate automated incremental nightly backups of new/modified files and data across all of our hosted websites. With each and every-one of our dedicated servers running Acronis we can now offer a further outstanding hosting service to all our clients, giving peace of mind and hands-free operation to all.

With that said, we thought we’d go that one step further, we’ve customised Acronis to run a weekly server-wide backups too! This means we not only have previous days workings and changes, we have entire week backups which are securely stored off-site.

How does this benefit the client?

Ever lost a picture, removed an order accidentally or even deleted a page? In the past this may have caused headaches and disruption, with Acronis incremental backups you need not worry, individual files through to entire databases can be recovered and restored quickly and easily.

RAID

RAID is a technology that allows computer users to achieve high levels of storage reliability via the technique of arranging the devices into arrays for redundancy.

In a slightly less tech-savvy explanation, having a RAID configured server means that hardware reliability is no longer an area of worry, as with everything, computer parts have a life expectancy, if you’ve ever had a Hard Drive fail you’ll already know this can be detrimental to every-day business and can sometimes lead to permanent data loss.

For example, RAID arranges files in such a way that if 1 out of 2 Hard Drives fails, data stored on the working Hard Drive can be used to restore the other quickly and easily vice-versa. This simply means, no data is ever at the mercy of hardware failure.

All of our dedicated servers are configured with RAID as standard.

Introducing Nanowatt