For Eg:
Use this one

$installer->run("CREATE TABLE `{$this->getTable('test_table')}` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`event` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ''
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;");

Instead of

$installer->run("CREATE TABLE `test_table` (
`id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
`event` varchar(255) NOT NULL default ''
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;");

If you want to alter the structure of an existing module, Magento support a simple versioning scheme that will let you automatically run scripts to upgrade your modules.

Once Magento runs an installer script for a module, it will never run another installer for that module again (short of manually deleting the reference in the core_resource table). Instead, you’ll need to create an upgrade script. Upgrade scripts are very similar to installer scripts, with a few key differences. To get started, do the following steps.

1. Check the version of your module in yourcustommodule/etc/config.xml. You will have something like this there.
   
<modules>
<YourCompany_YourModule>
<version>0.1.0</version>
</YourCompany_YourModule>
</modules>


   Here the version of the module noted as 0.1.0.

2. We need to place the upgrade script in YourCustomModule/sql/yourcustommodule_setup folder.
3. Create the upgrade script with new sql statements like the same way we created the install script.
4. Name the script as mysql4-upgrade-0.1.0-0.1.1.php. The syntax should be like mysql-upgrade-old.version.number-new.version.number
5. Edit the version number in yourcustommodule/etc/config.xml.
6. Reload your site. It’s all set!!

The thing that I enjoy most about my work is undeniably the simple fact that I work in the space of eCommerce. It’s a fantastic field to be in as I am sure those who work in eCommerce would also agree. It’s more than a job; it is a type of lifestyle. I find one thing in common with all of us who are in this space, its something we almost live and breath and is often hard to switch off from. We are always looking and working on ways to advance our own or help people’s business ideas and dreams become a viable and successful online reality.

We deal with many types of clients, in all kinds of industries, both product and service based industries, all of which work with eCommerce at different levels and at varying capacity. Our clients consist of larger organizations, small to medium sized companies, partners or simply individuals who have an eCommerce idea that they desire to establish online and are seeking the help and support from someone who understands then in order to make it happen. The end result is a satisfied customer who is able to make it happen online embracing all of the possibilities that the Internet and particularly eCommerce has to offer.

I love working in the eCommerce industry because we are part of a growing industry that is defining the web and literally changing the way people live, work and play and especially shop! It has bought a new dimension to the world of commerce and has changed the world forever. Not only has it revolutionized the way we shop, it has even revolutionized the way we think, providing opportunities for people all over, even the less advantaged.

Just he other day I was watching the evening news when it showed a short story of a mainland Chinese town who is embracing eCommerce in their community. They were using eCommerce as a way to generate a livelihood for people within the town by involving them in the processes of selling and distributing products to the greater Chinese community. This is both encouraging and humbling considering that a few years ago many of these people would be relatively isolated and perhaps limited to their direct community. This is just basic example of how eCommerce is changing not only individuals and businesses but also entire communities.

Working with eCommerce involves helping people to grow and to change, encouraging them to think outside normal way of operating and perhaps the way that has been most comfortable and familiar to them for so many years.

Embracing eCommerce may even require people thinking outside the box as it were, embracing new ideas and concepts, some that others have already thought of and adopted, but often new, innovative ideas, which will impress and even, inspire people.

The greatest thing that I love about working with eCommerce is that we are in a field were we are creating something of financial, economical, social, creative and operational value. We are always involved in the processes of helping people realize their potential online, the potential that the Internet and its supporting technology has made possible as well as the people who embrace it.

There is more I could write but I don’t want to get to philosophical on this point! : ) I just want to encourage both those who work with eCommerce, who at times may feel a little tired or frustrated, as it is hard work. As well as those on the other side of the fence, the ‘end-user’s, who are essentially those the eCommerce solution is being for. Be encouraged as there many possibilities out there as well as many great ‘eCommerce people’ to help you along the way.

Magento extensions are playing a large and vital role in the progress of Magento Commerce because they are helping to not only advance and enhance Magento, but also to literally shape its existence. Magento extensions help address the functional requirements of the store. Every eCommerce store has its own unique functional requirements that often cannot be addressed by the standard core system itself. This is fair enough. The core system is not and will not necessarily address every single element that the store requires.

This is especially true for unique and very context specific stores that have various requirements of their own. The good thing is that with Magento Commerce being such a flexible and robust Open Source eCommerce platform and framework, there is indeed the provision for additional extension development, were custom Magento extensions can be created and added to the store to accomplish the specific functional requirements of the store owner.

The great thing is that even if Magento can not address all of the functional requirements out of the box as it were, the flexibility exists to enable you accomplish this either by adding pre-developed extensions available through 3rd parties or having the Magento extension you require custom designed and developed so that it suits your exact needs.

The large and growing range of Magento extensions available help to address the various functional requirements stores have. Today store owners can benefit from other peoples development efforts as they offer a large number of functions and facilities that will either do the exact thing you require, having been developed for the same purpose, or even indirectly address your requirement. For example, at ECSSO we have a particular Magento extension for advanced attribute search called the Magento Advanced Search – Product Attribute Filter Extension, that was originally designed for a website that sells car tyres/tires. It was developed to address a specific Magento global search requirement that couldn’t be attained using Magento’s default function. Later it was further enhanced to address a requirement for a Magento store requiring a Magento extension for searching and ordering loose diamonds. This particular Magento extension has since been used for various other stores and has helped them address various drill down search requirements that would not have otherwise been possible.

This is the beauty about Magento and Magento extensions. In this case other customers have benefited greatly through the collective development effort offered to others. For a fraction of the cost store owners can add greater value to their own website that may other wise not have been feasible. My utilizing Magento extensions it eliminates the requirement of having to bare the cost of designing and developing the Magento extension on your own and at your own direct cost.

In other cases, Magento extensions play a vital part in addressing areas of operation where Magento ‘fails’ to address the specific customer needs for functions or processes they require. The availability of various and diverse extensions make this possible and provide a cost effective solution. This is what makes Magento the best eCommerce solution on the market and this is what makes Magento great.

Though it would seem that Magento is indeed trying to meet each and every eCommerce functional need available, it is natural that it can not always do so at the pace that such requirements are needed. However Magento has provided the framework and basis for custom Magento extension so fill the void and address such needs, limited only by the height of peoples vision, requirements and needs.

Utilizing Magento extensions will not only help address specific eCommerce needs, but considering the diverse ange fo extensions that are available, will also give you some great ideas of ‘what else’ can be done with the Magento store to help enhance its functionality and customer value. At the time of writing this article there are over 3,000 Magento extensions available and the number is growing daily.

Magento extensions add great value to stores because the offer a way for store owners to add creative and functional facilities to benefit store and its users. In some cases the Magento extensions themselves serve to address the entire fundamental purpose of the store. This is true in cases were the entire store concept is based on a function and facility made possible through the utilization of a particular custom developed Magento extension. An example of this is a pizza store using a custom post code delivery extension, filtering our all orders that fall outside the delivery zone. Or another one might be a music store offering downloadable music samples to customer prior to purchase. There are many such examples were specific Magento extensions make eCommerce possible.

If you would like to learn more about how custom Magento extensions can help you address your specific store requirements or would like to learn more about any of our own extensions, please contact us today. We would be glad to help.

Here is a link of some of the Magento Extensions available at ECSSO – Magento Extensions

This article explains how to integrate the ‘tweet button’ and ‘facebook like button’ of various styles for Magento.

Instructions:

1. Open file to \app\design\frontend\default\default\template\catalog\product\view.phtml
2. Copy the codes of the button that suite your magento store design and paste them exactly where you need to appear the button in the frontend
3. Save the file and refresh the page

Facebook Like Button:
Add the following codes to display the facebook like button in the products view page.

1. Standrad Button
   
   Using XFBML
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl(); ?>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like href="<?php echo $currentUrl ?>" show_faces="false" width="450" font=""></fb:like>

   Using iframe
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl(); ?>
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo $currentUrl ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;font&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

2. Minimal with count – Horizontal
   
   Using XFBML
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl();  ?>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like href="<?php echo $currentUrl ?>" layout="button_count" show_faces="true" width="450" font=""></fb:like>

   Using iframe
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl(); ?>
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo $currentUrl ?>&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;font&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

3. Minimal with count – Vertical
   
   Using XFBML
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl();  ?>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script><fb:like href="=<?php echo $currentUrl ?>" layout="box_count" show_faces="true" width="450" font=""></fb:like>

   Using iframe
   <?php $currentUrl = $this->helper('core/url')->getCurrentUrl(); ?>
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo $currentUrl ?>&amp;layout=box_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;font&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=65" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:65px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Twitter Button:
The twitter buttons are very simple and takes the current pages url automatically. i.e. it doesnot need any php codes for its working. Placing the javascript codes at the correct location will make the button load in the next page refresh.

1. Vertical
   
   <a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="vertical">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
2. Horizontal
   
   <a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="horizontal">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

3. No Count
   
   <a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="none">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Fatal error: Call to undefined method Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Widget::getrowurl() in

[yourpath]/app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Widget/Grid.php on line 1622 in v1.5.0.1
[yourpath]/app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Widget/Grid.php on line 1607 in v1.4.2.0

And for manage categories section, it may show a blank screen without any errors, just like the screenshot below.

Solution:

1. Open the file app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Widget/Grid.php
2. Search and Find
   $res = parent::getRowUrl($item);
   and replace with
   $res = parent::getUrl($item);
3. Save the file and check again.

Note: We found these issues in the Magento versions v1.5.0.1 and v1.4.2.0 while testing. Please let us know if you find this issue in other versions by commenting below this article, so that we can update our article

Solution:

For this you need to remove the validation for the particular section.

1. Open \app\design\install\default\default\template\install\config.phtml
2. Find the textbox where the base url is entered. It will be around line no 85 with name ‘config[unsecure_base_url]‘
3. Remove ‘validate-url’ from its class and save the file.
   
4. Now you can continue the installation.

It is the best way to attain your very own website personality that reflects your brand, business, products and services you sell, culture and identity, or that of your customer if you are designing and developing a Magento store on their behalf.

In essence there are no limitations to what you can accomplish when you take this approach to Magento eCommerce store design, development and implementation, as it opens up a limitless range of creative possibilities, demonstrated by the uniqueness of each and every theme that goes through integration to the end product. Every business has its own personality and culture and communicating this through the way you do eCommerce is exciting, challenging and rewarding. It is our goal as development consultants to ensure that we deliver this successfully either directly to our end client, or on behalf of our solution partners that rely one our Magento development services.

People come to us with newly designed themes that they would like integrated onto the Magento Commerce platform. It is our role and responsibility to take the template and convert it into a functional eCommerce store, utilizing all of the systems capabilities, features and functions that have been accounted for and specified in the design.

Magento theme integration is a very large and exciting part of our business and we love it. This is because it gives us the opportunity to work on developing new and exciting Magento stores that stretch the boundaries of creativity and help us to make other peoples vision a functional and practical reality. Integrating a Magento theme that is unique and different is very rewarding as we understand both the technical importance of our service that our clients rely on, as well as the satisfaction the end result brings to all related stakeholders including the online shopper, the end-client, and our solution partners. It is also very rewarding to take a design that is basically a ‘flat image’ and visual representation of the eCommerce store and turn it into a fully functional solution that people can interact with, use and ultimately benefit from.

If you would like to learn more about our Magento Theme Integration services please Contact Us.

Here are some helpful links;
- Learn more about eCommerce Software Solutions Online (ECSSO)
- See our Custom Magento Integration Services
- See our Magento Hosting Services and Plans
- See our Magento Development and Integration Packages

There are many reasons for this, but I think that essentially it comes back to this one major factor and that is the simple fact that Magento is a software program with a high degree of functional and operational complexity. Being a hosted eCommerce solution, it is required to run efficiently and with out error, on an online environment for the purpose of generating real value in reach, sales revenue and profit. There are many factors involved and the Magento consultants involved in the project need to understand what these factor are and address these accordingly.
Bluntly but kindly put, not only does the implementation of Magento involve the attractive design and set up of a theme/template, input of products, and general configuration of the system and hosting, it requires technical knowledge, insight and experience. Magento while easy enough to install and get running for the purpose of setting up a basic eCommerce store is not that difficult, is both fast and cost effective, however there are a still certain intricacies and complexities that are inherent with this fantastic eCommerce system that make it complicated, requiring the attention of well versed professional Magento consultants. The smaller, simpler and newer the Magento store, the less these facts are obvious, however when dealing with larger, more complex and especially existing Magento stores it becomes apparent the importance of ensuring that the Magento developers and consultants used posses the required degree of skills and expertise with Magento, the Zend Platform as well as the related Internet applications and technologies.

Before I continue, please allow me to explain, firstly, I am not saying that only the ‘elite’ can set up or should set up Magento stores. What I am saying is that if one is serious about the stability, success and immediate to long term success of the development, support and maintenance of their Magento eCommerce store front, then it is important to seek the right Magento professionals who have experience with Magento to ensure a successful and stable deployment.

At eCommerce Software Solutions Online (ECSSO) we are committed to the immediate and long term success of our clients and are dedicated towards helping them achieve the very best results from their Magento eCommerce stores and Magento related projects.

We offer a wide range of Magento Services and Solutions for the individual needs of our clients.

We also offer professional Dedicated Magento Consulting Services for those clients who desire to establish a longer (3 month plus) working relationship and require us to facilitate them with their Magento project or projects for those clients that have multiple Magento projects that they require help with.

If you require one of Magento Consulting Services you may want to consider our Magento Development and Integration Services.

ECSSO is ready to assist you at any level of your Magento eCommerce store or project. Please Contact ECSSO today; we would be more that delighted to discuss your needs.