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

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

An atypical Saturday night…

Sandra — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:06:10 +0000

Jigowatt (minus Jay – slacker!) donned their dickie bows and frocks on Saturday the 24th of Oct as special guests and official sponsors at the African Joy Autumn Charity Ball. We were overwhelmed when almost 200 people gave us a warm round of applause at the sumptuous event which raised close to £7000 from sponsorship packages, a superb auction on the night and a raffle. However, late in the evening the crowd were convinced that Donny and Chris on the dance floor were part of the entertainment and were on the verge on donating more for their performance!

African Joy raises money for disadvantaged children in Africa and is currently supporting an orphanage in Liberia and a local charity called WAKE UP Uganda – which helps to provide housing and education.
Their Jigowatt designed website www.africanjoy.co.uk goes live soon. Keep your eyes peeled for a case study.

No related posts.

Introducing Nanowatt

Jay — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:43:46 +0000

Jigowatt are happy to introduce a brand new service; Nanowatt. As the name suggests, Nanowatt is Jigowatt’s little brother and is a service aimed at giving new and small businesses powerful web site solutions with zero compromise.

The idea came to fruition when recently a new client came to Jigowatt for a quote on a new, small business web site citing a service he had found elsewhere on the web offering static 4 page web sites for extremely low cost. To be frank we were disappointed by the level of quality exhibited in these templated sites and particularly dismayed at the lack of control given to the client. We found many similar services all of which charged monthly costs from £25 to £50 (plus the initial setup cost) which allowed 2 to 5 simple text changes. Adding pages was a whole other issue.

Happily we were able to persuade the client to hire Jigowatt and while it cost a little extra initially we were able to provide him with a gorgeous web site, powered by WordPress which he could easily update and expand by himself at a competitive price. As we expected, within a week of the clients new site going live, he has already added several pages, made multiple text changes and most importantly created a blog and started adding new posts which has done wonders for his SEO. This alone would have cost him hundreds of pounds if he’d opted to go with one of the aforementioned services, if it would have been possible at all.

We’ve decided to brand this package as Nanowatt, Jigowatts little brother. For a fixed low price we offer a package with unrivaled features and flexibility, all built on WordPress and geared towards putting our clients in control of their content. The front end of these sites are provided by a plethora of high quality WordPress themes, of which we’ve built a database and are comfortably assured that we’ve a theme for any type of web site, be it business, personal or misc!

You can read all about Nanowatt and it’s features on the Nanowatt page.

Nanowatt will eventually be a fully blown web site which stands independently of Jigowatt.co.uk, where we intend to allow new customers to sign up automatically through web forms. But for now if you’re interested in a Nanowatt package of your own please contact us via the form on the Nanowatt page.

Jigowatt.co.uk Re-align

Jay — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:32:26 +0000

We’ve recently donned the Jigowatt Thinking Cap^TM and decided that while we’re delighted with the web sites we’re building for clients, our own web site was a little sub standard…

The Jigowatt Thinking Cap^TM

So coinciding with our first birthday and first email newsletter (finally) we decided to do some fine tuning and upgrading… here’s what we’ve done. We’ve kept the look and feel parallel with the previous incarnation but have paid close attention to improving how the site works and writing better content. This will hopefully result in a better experience for our visitors and ourselves equating to more regular updates in both the blog and case studies sections.

In other Jigowatt news we’ve recently taken on a new developer. PHP Maestro Chris has been wading waist deep through the vast Jigowatt database infrastructure since June tinkering and refining. He has thoroughly improved our web site building capabilities, bringing outsource services in house to improve simultaneous workflows. He also likes cookies.

You can read more about the latest goings on by subscribing to our newsletter and/or RSS feed.

Migrating to FreeAgent

Jay — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:33:17 +0000

As Jigowatt is still in it’s infancy we’ve been acutely aware of tracking time and money to ensure that the business runs as smoothly, efficiently and profitably as possible. To do this we’ve been using an online time tracking app the same way many other small businesses do. However after our first year we came to realise that the current system didn’t really suit our way of working and so began searching for an alternative.

There are literally hundreds of choices out there and we trawled through them all before finding FreeAgent. FreeAgent appeared to fulfill all of our requirements and after a quick look around the back-end control panel we were sold.

FreeAgent conveniently offers a 30 day trial period so we could really put the app through it’s paces and discover all of its many features. We were treated to an indepth demonstration by one of the FreeAgent staff who showed us the basics and even helped us with migrating a lot of the data from our previous system (something we envisaged would be a nightmare).

Some of our favorite FreeAgent features so far are;

Gorgeous admin panel – You simply can’t underestimate how important this is… when it comes to adding timesheets the last thing you want to be doing is trudging through a clunky interface. FreeAgent makes adding time sheets a piece of cake and, care I say an enjoyable task?
Integration – Everything in FreeAgent is connected, from the clients contact details to the estimates relating to their projects to the freelancers who’ve dedicated time to it, right through to the invoicing, everything is generated and integrated automatically
Professional – As I said previously, with everything being integrated FreeAgent has an extremely professional feel to it, not only the way we use it but the way clients do too. Quotes and Invoices are all built on a templated system (with built in reminders) so everything is handled in the most professional way possible.
Tax – Nobody enjoys it (well, accountants do I suppose) but FreeAgent makes preparing for that time of the year a whole lot easier by calculating all of your income, expenses, VAT and generating detailed reports for your accountant to use.

Really there are far too many features to list here so we would encourage you to check out the FreeAgent features page to see for yourself. As an added bonus if you sign-up by following this link you will be entitled to a 10% discount .

So to reiterate; FreeAgent – it’s awesome – go sign up right now!

Introducing Nanowatt