http://www.magentocommerce.com

Varien, a Los Angeles web development firm is the brainchild behindMagento, and my what a fantastic job they have done on this product. It’s by far one of the more exciting e-commerce platforms available for free on the market today. Dripping with features, they really have thought of everything. Wishlists, shop by price and category, item comparison – all the things we’ve come to expect from professional web stores. Its software as good as this that really keeps licensed software on their toes..

Just some of the features, for a full list download the pdf

Notable Features

• Integrated with Google Analytics
• Multiple Images with Zoom
• Add to Wishlist
• Send to a Friend
• Batch Import and Export of Catalog
• One Page Checkout
• Multi Lingual

Read what they have to say about the other 9 solutions here

From Smashing Magazine

Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: Polaroid Magento Theme, a professional design skin for the shops powered by the popular open-source ecommerce web application Magento. The theme was designed by eCommerce-Themes and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is absolutely free to use in private and commerical projects.

• live demo
• large preview (.png)
• installation guide and documentation
• download the .zip-package (zip, 1.1 Mb)
• release on the developer’s site

log_customer
log_quote
log_summary
log_summary_type
log_url
log_url_info
log_visitor
log_visitor_info

and

report_event

This last table collects information on
catalog_product_view (products recently viewed box)
sendfriend_product
catalog_product_compare_add_product (recently compared products box and compare box)
checkout_cart_add_product
wishlist_add_product (wishlist box not wishlist itself)
wishlist_share

and is very prone to bloat.

If any of these tables are large and yes, 1/2 a million records is large you can Empty them.

Put a tick next to each table you wish to Empty (NOT DROP). At the bottom of the table list you will see the option. With checked : Select Empty. You will be taken to a confirmation screen asking if you are sure you wish to TRUNCATE these tables. Select yes and you could potentially reclain a lot of disk space.

Once you have done this use the same technique to OPTIMISE your table. Log into the backend and refresh your cache.

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we work with talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And in the end truly impressive works see the light of day.

Today we are glad to release Sigyn SM — a free high-quality Magento theme created by Silverthemes.com especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme has a unique grungy design that stands out and can serve as a good baseline for your Magento-powered online shops.

• large preview 1
• large preview 2
• large preview 3
• installation and configuration guide
• download the theme (0.2 Mb)

• AdSense Integrator
  • This powerful plugin represents a complete solution to add and manage AdSense ads into your blog, it follows the last Google AdSense rules and updates.
  • After trying several Adsence insertion tools this was by far the easiest and gave enough options to ensure I will not bother to look at any others for a while.  It does what it says on the tin.  It allows you to place your ads where you want them using a simple and intuitive interface.
• Google Analyticator
  • Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics’ UID and enable logging.
  • Keeping track of your visitors is important for you and your clients.  I have found this plugin to be the easiest of the Analytics integration tools.  There are a wide range of options if you want to dig in but you only really have to supply your analytics id for the site you wish to track.  There is the option to authorise the plugin with Google to give access to all your tracking codes from a drop down list which is a powerful.
• Google XML Sitemaps
  • This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page
  • Your site is no good if no one can find it and your customers will want to see there vanity search appearing in Google asap.  This plugin automatically generates a Google XML site map and notified various search engine of updates and locations.  Very easy to setup.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade
  • WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to WordPress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode.
  • The new automatic upgrade facility in WordPress has made it one of my favourite tools. After years of trying to keep up with patches and upgrades at last we can see how it can be done (PHPBB take heed!!!)  However, if you have a pre 2.7 WordPress installation upgrades can be a drag which is where this plugin come in.  Install it and follow the prompts and it will backup your site and database and proceed to bring your installation up to the latest. Magic
• WP-Footnotes
  • Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post.
  • This is a very clever little plugin which automatically creates footnotes as you go along.  All you need to do is to place the note in the text where it belongs and place double brackets around the ((note)).  The plugin will detect this and move the note to the bottom of the page and reference it accordingly.  If you add another footnote higher in the page it will automatically renumber the footnote.  Very useful. You can see this in action here on this local history site.
• Advanced Category Excluder
  • This plugin helps you to manage your content, RSS feeds, sidebar widgets, and fine tune where you want to display your posts, pages, links, link categories, or hide.
  • This gem of a plugin allows you to control what categories do or do not appear on your home page or any other page for that matter. This is great if you need to use categories to control the layout of sections of your site. You can see this in action on this Silk Wedding Flowers Site. Note the home page shows only posts from certain categories and not posts from categories which have their own Page link in the Nav bar. Very handy.
• cforms
  • cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more.
  • I have been known to install WordPress only to host this plugin.  It is a very easy to use and powerful form managements system that is highly configurable and allows easy insertion of as many forms as you care to create with full control over the css of that form.  The 1st thing I do when rolling out sites is to replace the contact form with a CFORM powered alternative.
• kPicasa Gallery
  • Display your Picasa Web Galleries in a post or in a page.
  • Picasa / Picasaweb are amazing tools that cost nothing and achieve a lot.  Despite having access to very expensive software for managing the thousands of images on my PCs it is this humble freebie from Google that I use 99% of the time.  The export, email and upload to picasawebs features are simplicity itself.  There is no point in setting up elaborate gallery systems for your customers when this free offering is very fast and reliable.  It will also offer reassurance to clients that you are not the sole custodian of their images.  So once your client has uploaded thousands of images to hundreds of galleries how to do you integrate them into WordPress and keep the audience on site? This is where kPicasa comes in.  Once installed simple tell it your picasaweb username and which of the javascript effects you wish to use and then use the simple codes to insert the albums or all the albums into your pages.  Note that the latter option only works on an empty page which seems an unnecessary restriction. However, you can get around this by simply listing all the albums you want to show.  The user will see an image which represents the album and clicking on this will take them to a gallery of images all embedded in your site.  This can be seen used in this wedding flower design gallery.
• Picasa Image Express
  • Browse, search and select photos from any publicly available Picasa Web Album and add them to your post/pages.
  • While kPicasa takes care of displaying albums any user of Picasaweb will have the need to display an individual image from a specific album now and then.  This is where Picasa Image Express comes in.. This plugin adds a new icon to the media icons and gives immediate direct access to your picasa account and allows simple insertion of thumbnails into your posts.  Compatible with kPicasas lightbox feature. Together these two plugins offer the perfect gallery management solution.
• Multi-level Navigation Plugin
  • A WordPress plugin which adds a multi-level CSS based dropdown/flyout/slider menu to your WordPress blog. Visit the WP Multi-level Navigation Plugin page for more information about the plugin, or our navigation support board for help with adding the menu to your theme.
  • This is a very useful nav bar creator which is highly configurable and easy to style.  It is possible to use pages and categories in the bar and is very easy to insert into your theme.  The home page for the plugin has a theme creation tool which allows you to use a number of pre-made styles.  However, if you comfortable with CSS you can create any style you like.
• Page Links To
  • Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.
  • A neat little plugin that allows you to redirect a click on any page to any other URL. Ideal for redirecting menu items to categories or for integrating out-of-wordpress sections of your site.
• Special Text Box
  • is very simple, very little and very usefull WordPress plugin (for me and, I hope, for you). It adds little style sheet file and short code to blog for highlighting some portion of text in post as coloured boxes. That may be warning, alert, info and download portion of post’s text.
  • this is a very cool plugin that allows you to add a quickly syled text box to any post or page and even float to the left or right.  very powerful, effective and easy to use.
• Easily Navigate Pages
  • Display a folder tree of your pages that is easy to expand and contract on your Dashboard. Designed for people that use WordPress as a content management system.
  • This is a very handy widget for your dashboard that gives one click access to your pages.  Very good idea and nicely implemented. You can find more info on the authors blog

add the following to vert_nav.phtml

<div class="vertical-nav-container box base-mini">
<div class="vertical-nav">
<!--<div class="head">-->
<!--<h4>-->
<div class="block block-cart">
    <div class="block-title">
        <strong><span><?php echo $this->__('Categories') ?></span></strong>
</div><!--End block block-cart-->
<div class="block-content">
<!--</h4>-->
<!--</div>--><!--End Of head-->
<h4 class="no-display">
<?php echo $this->__('Category Navigation:') ?></h4>
<ul id="nav_vert">
<?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
<?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?>
<?php endforeach ?> </ul>
</div>
</div><!--End Of vertical-nav-->
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('topLeftLinks') ?>
</div><!--End Of vertical-nav-container box base-mini-->

Step 2
In app / design / frontend / YOUR DESIGN / YOURTemplate / layout / catalog.xml

<!--
Category default layout
-->
    <catalog_category_default translate="label">
        <label>Catalog Category (Non-Anchor)</label>
        <reference name="root">
            <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template></action>
        </reference>
        <reference name="left">
<!--  <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency" template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>-->
 <block type="catalog/navigation" before="-" name="catalog.vertnav" template="catalog/navigation/vert_nav.phtml"/>

NOTE: you are simply commenting out line 10 and adding line 11

Step 3

In in skin/frontend/YOURDESIGN/YOURtemplate/css/widgets.css

#nav { float:left; margin-top:15px; margin-left:15px; font-size:1.1em; }

/************** ALL LEVELS  *************/ /* Style consistent throughout all nav levels */
#nav li { position:relative;text-transform:uppercase; text-align:left;    }
#nav li.over { z-index:999; }
#nav a,
#nav a:hover { display:block; line-height:1.3em; text-decoration:none; }
#nav span { display:block; cursor:pointer; white-space:nowrap; }
#nav li ul span {white-space:normal; }

/************ 0 LEVEL  ***************/
#nav li { float:left; margin:1px 8px 11px 1px; padding:3px 8px; }
#nav li.active a { color:#444; }
#nav a { float:left; background:url(../images/nav_top_level_arrow.gif) no-repeat 100% 50%; padding-right:11px; color:#444; font-weight:bold; }
#nav li.over a,
#nav a:hover { color:#444; }
#nav li.over,
#nav li.active { margin:0 7px 10px 0; border:1px solid #bbb; background:#ececec; }

/************ 1ST LEVEL ************/
#nav ul li,
#nav ul li.active,
#nav ul li.over { float:none; border:none; background:none; margin:0; padding:0; padding-bottom:1px; text-transform:none; }
#nav ul li.parent { background:url(../images/nav_parent_arrow.gif) no-repeat 100% 50%; }
#nav ul li.last { padding-bottom:0; }
#nav ul li.active { margin:0; border:0; background:none; }
#nav ul a,
#nav ul a:hover { float:none; padding:0; background:none; }
#nav ul li a { font-weight:normal !important; }

/************ 2ND LEVEL ************/
#nav ul { position:absolute; width:15em; top:22px; left:-10000px; border:1px solid #bbb; border-bottom:2px solid #999; padding:3px 8px; background:#fcfcfc; font-size:11px; }

/* Show menu */
#nav li.over > ul { left:-1px; }
#nav li.over > ul li.over > ul { left:100px; }
#nav li.over ul ul { left:-10000px; }

#nav ul li a { padding:3px 0; color:#444 !important; }
#nav ul li a:hover { padding:3px 0; color:#5a7f00 !important; }

/************ 3RD+ LEVEL ************/
#nav ul ul { top:5px; }

    /**********************************************Vertical Nav ****************************************/

    #nav_vert { padding:0 8px; font-size:1em; z-index:999; width:180px; background-color: #F6F6F6; }

    /************** ALL LEVELS *************/ /* Style consistent throughout all nav levels */

    #nav_vert li {

    width:200px;

    list-style:none;

    position:relative;

    text-align:left;

    background-color: #F6F6F6;

    border-bottom-width: thin;

    border-bottom-style: solid;

    border-bottom-color: #CCCCCC;

    }

    #nav_vert li.over { z-index:999; }

    #nav_vert li.active { z-index:999; } /* to prevent the li separator from showing through on mouseover on li */

    #nav_vert a { line-height:1.3em; }

    #nav_vert a, #nav_vert a:hover { display:block; text-decoration:none; }

    #nav_vert span { display:block; cursor:pointer; color: #000; }

    /************ 1ST LEVEL ***************/

    #nav_vert li { float:left; background:url(../images/nav_bg.gif) repeat-x 50%; height:30px; margin-right:1px; }

    #nav_vert li.active a { color:#4c6a16; }

    #nav_vert a {

    float:left;

    padding:5px 12px 6px 8px;

    color:#4c6a16;

    font-weight:bold;

    font-family:Trebuchet MS;

    font-size:13px;}

    #nav_vert li.over a, #nav_vert a:hover { color:#CCCCCC; }

    /************ 1ST LEVEL RESET ************/

    #nav_vert ul li, #nav_vert ul li.active {

    float:none;

    height:auto;

    background:none;

    margin:0;

    }

    #nav_vert ul a, #nav_vert ul a:hover {

    float:none;

    padding:0;

    background:none;

    }

    #nav_vert ul li a { font-weight:normal !important; }

    /************ 2ND LEVEL ***********/

    #nav_vert ul {

    position: absolute;

    width:200px;

    margin-left:180px;

    top:0px;

    left:-10000px;

    border:1px solid #666666;

    }

    /* Show menu */

    #nav_vert li.over ul { left:0; }

    #nav_vert li.over ul ul { left:-10000px; }

    #nav_vert li.over ul li.over ul { left:100px; }

    #nav_vert ul li a { background:#FFFFFF/*#ecf3f6*/; }

    #nav_vert ul li a:hover { background: #F2F1D2; /*#d5e4eb;*/ }

    #nav_vert ul li a span { background:url(../images/nav_divider.gif) repeat-x 0 100%; }

    #nav_vert ul li a, #nav_vert ul li a:hover { color:#2f2f2f !important; }

    #nav_vert ul span, #nav_vert ul li.last li span { padding:6px 15px 6px 15px; }

    #nav_vert ul li.last span { background:none; }

    /************ 3RD+ LEVEL ************/

    #nav_vert ul ul { top:5px;}

    #nav_vert ul ul ul { left:-10000px;}

    #nav_vert li.over ul li.over ul ul { left:-10000px;}

    #nav_vert li.over ul li.over ul li.over ul { left:100px; }

       /* Fix for the IE bug */

    #nav_vert iframe {

    position: absolute;

    left: -1px;

    top: 0;

    z-index: -1;

    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(style=0,opacity=0);

    }

Step 4

copy top.phtml from the base/defualt/template/catalog/navigation to your custom template folder ie app/design/frontend/YOURDESIGN/YOURDESIGN/template/catolog/navigation/top.phtml replace top.phtml

Edit your copy of top.phtml so it look like this

<?php
/**
 * Magento
 *
 * NOTICE OF LICENSE
 *
 * This source file is subject to the Academic Free License (AFL 3.0)
 * that is bundled with this package in the file LICENSE_AFL.txt.
 * It is also available through the world-wide-web at this URL:
 * http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php
 * If you did not receive a copy of the license and are unable to
 * obtain it through the world-wide-web, please send an email
 * to license@magentocommerce.com so we can send you a copy immediately.
 *
 * DISCLAIMER
 *
 * Do not edit or add to this file if you wish to upgrade Magento to newer
 * versions in the future. If you wish to customize Magento for your
 * needs please refer to http://www.magentocommerce.com for more information.
 *
 * @category    design
 * @package     base_default
 * @copyright   Copyright (c) 2009 Irubin Consulting Inc. DBA Varien (http://www.varien.com)
 * @license     http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php  Academic Free License (AFL 3.0)
 */
?>
<?php
/**
 * Top menu for store
 *
 * @see Mage_Catalog_Block_Navigation
 */
?>

In other words delete all the active code.

Step 5

Add the category block to your home page.

lo on to the back end

CMS >> Pages >> Home Page >> design

in the Design Box paste this code

<reference name="left">
    <!--  <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency" template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>-->
        <block type="catalog/navigation" before="-" name="catalog.vertnav" template="catalog/navigation/vert_nav.phtml"/>
</reference>

If you are getting errors about toggleMenu or if the menu appears but the pop out sub-categories do not work you are probably seeing the results of magento dropping support for toggleMenu.

as a quick and dirty fix you can paste:

function toggleMenu(el, over)
{
    if (over) {
        Element.addClassName(el, 'over');
    }
    else {
        Element.removeClassName(el, 'over');
    }
}

in at the start of js/varien/menu.js

Note this is not upgrade proof..

References / credits:
The original post can be found here where one Peter Hamilton provided most of the clever work at a time when people were just starting to come to terms with Magento.
From this post I extracted the complete solutions and created the original wiki entry here this has now been updated by Bill007 to 1.4 compatable and a lot of this post is based on his alterations.
Details how to create an upgrade proof installation by Joshua Barrie full details of which can be read here

There is already a very good tutorial for setting this up under cpanel but the procedure is slightly different for Plesk.

Follow the instruction given on crucial’s tutorial till you get to step 20.. then come back here

Assume that your main store is here

/var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/

step 1
Create domain2.com as your normally would in plesk.

Step 2
Create vhost.conf in /var/www/vhosts/domain2.com/conf and enter

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/domain2.com/httpdocs>
php_admin_value open_basedir "/var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs:/var/www/vhosts/domain2.com/httpdocs:/tmp"
</Directory>

this will allow the two shops to call files which would other wise not be allowed.
If you are using ssl you will need to copy vhost.conf to vhost_ssl.conf in the same folder.
To make these change ‘live’ run the following

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -v -a

Step 3
Copy index.php and .htaccess from /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs to /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs

if you have installed magento in its own folder copy the files from:

/var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/magento to /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/magento

on domain2.com edit index.php

Find

$mageFilename = '/app/Mage.php';

and change to

$mageFilename = '/var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/shop/app/Mage.php';

This is why you needed to change vhost.conf in step 2 so that domain2 can talk across site to domain2

Now find

Mage::run();

and change to

Mage::run('site2','website');

where ‘site2′ is the code you assigned in Step 8 of the crucial tutorial

Stpe 4
You now need to create symbolic link to key folder on domain1.com

run the following while in /var/www/vhosts/domain2.com/httpdocs/

ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/404/ ./404
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/app/ ./app
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/includes/ ./includes
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/js/ ./js
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/media/ ./media
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/report ./report
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/skin/ ./skin
ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/var ./var

This will redirect all calls to the domains on domain2.com to the correct place on domain1.com

Note: if you installed on domain1.com/magento all you need to do is to create a symbolic link to :

ln -s /var/www/vhosts/domain1.com/httpdocs/magento ./magento

There is a fairly simple fix:

You can change the name of the Payment method “check / money order” to “cheque / postal order” in System > configuration > payment methods > check / money order and change the title to what you want

To change the wording in checkout:

edit

app/design/frontend/default/YOUR-template/template/payment/form/checkmo.phtml

and change the label directly.

In the additional product information section in Magento 1.4+ you are seeing the result of a bug as reported here :

http://www.magentocommerce.com/bug-tracking/issue?issue=9577

However, a quick fix is to

edit your template version of : /app/design/frontend/default/yourtemplate/template/catalog/product/view/attributes.phtml

and replace line 47:

<td class="data"><?php echo $_helper->productAttribute($_product, $_data['value'], $_data['code']) ?></td>

with:

  <td class="data"><?php echo html_entity_decode($_helper->productAttribute($_product, $_data['value'], $_data['code'])); ?> </td>

Keep an eye on the bug fix and updates as a fix in the future may throw problems that you will have to undo.

System > config > advanced > system > mail sending settings > set return path > YES