Category » Content Management Systems

OpenCart: display stock levels in storefront, as numbers or colour icons

As I mentioned here, a military, police and adventure gear store has hired me to set up their online presence and an e-commerce platform for them (not 100% ready yet, but soon!). I had a tough time finding the adequate solution for their needs, because even though OsCommerce is the typical script used by similar stores in the country, I agree with critics regarding its security issues, complex code architecture and too long delays when releasing updates. So I tested other scripts (Zen Cart, Magento, Prestashop, etc.) but definetly, the one which gave me the best overall impression is OpenCart: fast, simple yet powerful and highly customizable, and above all, very well rated by its reviewers. So that was my choice for the project.

Two weeks ago, I had no idea OpenCart existed; but today I am pleased to post my first humble contribution as new OpenCart’er: a tutorial on how to customise storefront appearance!

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Hide modules from registered users in Joomla 1.5

While Joomla 1.5 allows hiding modules from guests (and just show them to registered users), it lacks the ability to do the opposite, namely hiding modules from registered users. Of course such thing can be very useful when there are modules inviting users to register (how pointless to show them to already registered users!), or modules showing advertisements to guests.

As said, the backend does not allow you to set a module to show to guests only, but this can be very easily done in a couple of minutes and minimal effort with a simple hack to the template code. NO need to install plugins or add-ons! It is a simple yet very useful trick.

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Custom data in EventList frontend event submission form

This is (a quickly written and) the last planned post of the EventList 1.0RC Component for Joomla 1.5 customization series, and in response to Junkah’s request. It explains how to add custom fields in the event submission form; the example below is a text field where the number of available places can be specified. The example only covers the process of saving the submitted number in the database, so that it can be kept for future reference. If you wish to prevent further registration of guests once the number has been reached, then you will have to write some extra code for that purpose, but as I said this is beyond the scope of this post.

My apologies for not having all the free time I’d like to, for adding new contents more often and for writing with more details. Back to university, it’s all about priorities. It will be like this for some months, but I will do my best to keep up the knowledge sharing!

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Retrieving custom data into EventList

This is the second part of the post Adding custom fields to EventList, where I explained how custom data fields can be added to EventList Joomla Component by Schlu. In this post I will cover how to take full advantage from those custom fields by making EventList RC1.0 for Joomla 1.5 retrieve the information submitted through them.

As I mentioned in the first part, EventList does not allow (yet) a user-friendly system for adding custom fields, therefore there’s no user-friendly system either to retrieve custom data into EventList. Some modifications to the core files of the component are required for this purpose. The good news is, that it is not as complicate as it might seem at first.

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Showing registered users in EventList module

When using EventList module in conjunction with EventList 1.0RC component for Joomla 1.5, I missed the possibility of displaying in the module the number of registered attendees to each event, together with the already showing date, time, event name, etc.

My approach to the issue was to add some extra PHP code to the EventList Mod template; concretely the code below. But before you attempt to try the same in your website, remember to backup the affected file.

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Adding custom fields to EventList

One of the sites I was recently building uses EventList Joomla Component by Schlu. Despite it being a great tool, it does not allow (yet) a user-friendly system for adding custom fields, for instance in the venue submission screen or in the user signup page. It is possible however, according to their official forums, that a future release will have the option to add custom fields in easily from the backend.

But right now, from the backend it is not possible.

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