I’ve got a site on the Ning Network and started getting killed by spammers one day. I wanted to make sure that I was able to approve any new members. What the spammers were doing was just signing up with descriptive member names (ie. buy viagra today) and then immediately posting their junk.

This isn’t rocket science, but for some reason I found it to be a royal pain in the ass to find any Ning documentation on how to force new member approval on a Ning site.

Well, figured it out and here it is:

• login as Administrator
• select Manage
• select Privacy
• select Approve new members before they join

That’s it. That’s how you choose to approve new members/accounts on your Ning Network site.

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We’ve recently launched a 1 pager for Platform Event Services, a full service event production house specialising in event bars and concessions management for large-scale corporate events and festivals.

The 1 pager was the simple quick implementation for this new company. Over the next few weeks we’ll be expanding the site to better reflect their business. The future of the Platform Event Services Web site will see it provide social networking capabilities and team management tools as well as video demonstrating the advantages of working with Platform SF.

If you haven’t already visited the Platform SF Web site, go there now and let them what you think. Platform Event Services is available for immediate event assistance. Content them today to learn more.

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I recently needed to allow for a custom note to be shown in Magento’s Grid and List views. My client asked that they be able to add to any product a customized note (text snippet) to announce such things as “Expected back in stock soon”, “20% Off Today”, “Color Red Coming this Week” and so on.

Luckily this is easily accomplished by using Magento’s attribute system and then editing a few templates. In this example I will be adding an attribute titled “Grid Note” with a system value of “grid_note”. Below are the steps I used for printing a product attribute on both the Grid and List views of a Magento store.

The first step is to create a plain text magento attribute:

• login to the admin panel
• select Catalog => Attributes => Manage Attributes
• select Add New Attribute

Below are the actual values I submitted. Whatever not explicitly stated use default (you use whatever works for you):

Attribute Code: grid_note
Scope: Global
Catalog Input Type…: Text Field
Apply To: Selected Product Types :: Simple Product

Used in product listing: Yes

Now assign the new attribute to the proper attribute set(s):

• select Catalog => Attributes => Manage Attribute Sets
• drag your new Unassigned Attribute (grid_note) to Group
• select Save Attribute Set

Now check the new “Grid Note” attribute and add a value:

• select Catalog => Manage Products
• select a Product
• add text note to Grid Note attribute

The next step is to echo/print the new Magento attribute value to the grid and list view(s). There is good writeup on the Magento Wiki on How to add attributes to product grid in category which should first be reviewed. There are three files that I ended up editing to get to this point. For the sake of following through on my example and for my own documentation, I’ll list below the steps:

Edit: design/frontend/[your_template]/default/layout/catalog.xml

Follow the instructions under Update layout XML for How to add attributes to product grid in category.

I used the following lines:

<action method=”addAttribute”><attribute>GridNote</attribute></action>

Edit: design/frontend/[your_template]/default/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

Follow the instructions under Update templates for How to add attributes to product grid in category.

I used the following lines:

<?php
if ( $_product->getGridNote() ) {
?>
<p class=”gridnote”><?php
echo $_product->getGridNote();
?></p>
<?php
}
?>

Your next step is to add styling to your stylesheet. That should be pretty self explanatory and I won’t go into it here.

That’s about it for adding a custom note to your Magento store’s Grid and List views. By using Magento’s product attribute system you can add, edit, delete, and manage a custom message per product on your store’s Grid and List Views.

The following links were helpful in this post:

• Displaying Attributes in Catalogue List
• Adding custom attribute filter in product grid (in Admin)
• How to add attributes to product grid in category

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I recently upgraded an installation of Magento from version 1.1.6 to 1.3.2.1 which lead to a couple issues with the payment system. The first issue was that I had to reset Base URL under Secure in the Configuration. The SSL settings seemed to have gotten lost during the upgrade.

This leads to the Payment transaction failed email I received when testing the checkout after my Magento upgrade. The Reason given in the email was “The merchant login ID or password is invalid or the account is inactive” and that is pretty much what’s happened after the Magento upgrade. Just as my Secure Base URL was wiped out during the upgrade so was my Authorize.Net API Login ID and Transaction Key.

So, to get payments working after my Magento upgrade I had to fetch my API Login ID and re-issue a Transaction Key at Authorize.Net. I then went into the Authorize.Net settings under the Magento Payment Methods Configurations screen and re-entered them.

After testing, this took care of the failed payment at Checkout after my Magento upgrade

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The Ultimate Drupal Toolbox collected for us by Noupe. It’s worth taking a look at:

http://www.noupe.com/drupal/the-ultimate-drupal-toolbox.html

Drupal is one of the most popular CMSs out there, and it’s no surprise considering how extensible it is. You can customize almost every aspect of it through the use of themes, plugins, and a little custom coding. Below are more than 150 resources to help you do just that, from themes to plugins to examples of sites running on Drupal.

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Romance Pro is a Spammer. This MySpace user account was created to build links to the atrocious Caesars Pocono Resorts. This account comments on any number of your blog posts linking to the following url:

• http://www.myspace.com/romancepro

This person should be marked as SPAM across the Internet on all blogs.

Caesars Pocono Resorts should also be blacklisted. With advertising practices such as these I would not be surprised if they were infested with bed bugs. Ceasars Pocono Resorts has bed bugs.

For anyone else having issues with the MySpace spammer Romance Pro please Report Abuse for the user’s account by clicking here:

• http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=help.reportabuse&abusetype=profile&ProfileContentID=399481912

• 0 Comments

A nice list of Drupal Tutorials from MogDesign. Check it out here:

http://mogdesign.eu/blog/ultimate-drupal-tutorial-collection/

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I needed to create a Magento Staging Area for both common development tasks and testing the latest upgrades.

In order to create the staging area for my Magento store I’m going to create a mirror of it at a subdomain. I host on my own Linux server and use Godaddy to manage my domains.

My main Web site will be referred to as www.domain.com. I’ll be creating the Magento development site at dev.domain.com. Below is a step by step documentation of the steps taken to create my Magento staging area using virtual host.

Create CNAME Record:

=> login to Godaddy
=> select Domains : My Domains
=> select your domain (domain.com)
=> select Total DNS Control and MX Records
=> select Add New CNAME Record
=> enter (dev) as Alias Name
=> enter (domain.com) as Host Name

Create Staging Files:

=> copy live file directory to dev
=> run cp -R store.domain.com dev.domain.com

Create Staging Database:

=> create new Dev database
=> dump Production database
=> mysqldump –opt –user=liveuser –pass=livepass livedbname > livedbname.sql
=> load Staging database
=> mysql -u devuser -p devdbname < livedbname.sql

Setup Virtual Host in Apache:

=> locate conf file (ie httpd.conf, vhosts.conf)
=> create VirtualHost entry for dev.domain.com
=> locate apachectl
=> run ./apachectl configtest
=> run ./apachectl restart

Sync Staging Site DB Credentials:

=> editapp/etc/local.xml
=> edit lines
=> edit lines
=> edit lines

Sync Staging Site Database Settings:

=> login to MySQL dev database
=> find config to edit
=> SELECT * FROM `core_config_data` WHERE `path` LIKE ‘%base_url%’;
=> update path web/unsecure/base_url
=> update path web/secure/base_url

Cleanup Staging Site:

=> rm -rf downloader/pearlib/cache/* downloader/pearlib/download/*
=> rm -rf var/cache/* var/session/*

It might take a while to shake out the cache, but that should basically get you a Magento staging server — a snapshot of your live Magento site.

** Note: I pulled my hair out for hours trying to figure out why the dev url was not printing correctly. It just seemed that whatever I did the system wouldn’t pick up the new base_urls. What I did was restart apache which I’m assuming cleared cache and allowed for the update base_url to be picked up. Also, make sure var directory is writable.

• 4 Comments

It’s about the right list covering what Firefox has available right now for Web designers and developers:

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/01/25/26-essential-firefox-add-ons-for-web-designers/

Here’s a clip from the post:

It’s no secret that web designers and developers love Firefox! Firefox provides an endless amount of functionality that you simply won’t find in any other modern Internet browser.

One of the greatest aspects of Firefox is the ability to install add-ons to do just about anything and everything a browser can possibily do. As a web developer this functionality is extremely useful to us.

Firefox has some cool add-ons which make the job of website designers much easier. There are many useful add-ons for Firefox out there and we use several pretty much every day for work.

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I recently had a problem with users of Explorer and login problems on the frontend of a Magento store. They were able to login using Firefox, but when using Explorer they couldn’t login as a customer. The backend was fine.

I found that I had some configuration issues, primary with server system time and cookies which seemed to be causing this. The fix I found on the Magento forums:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/8788/

I still scratch my head as to why Firfox users are able to login to the frontend while Explorer users cannot login to the frontend of my Magento installation, but until I can figure that out this fix above seems to work. Increasing the cookie expiration time from the default 8600 to a hardier number seems to do the trick.

• 3 Comments