How to place drupal blocks anywhere in content.

If you're looking to place a block anywhere inside your content, simply do the following:

go to /admin/build/block

select the block you want to insert into your content to get the proper block references...

e.g. I created a custom views block called "latest_news" which, if you click it's url looks like:
/admin/build/block/configure/views/latest_news-block

so basically, you'll use "views" at the beginning of the function reference and "latest_news-block" at the end:

Drupal 7 method

Menu block

Tags: Drupal blocks

HOW-TO: Install Eaccelerator (Turck MMCache replacement)

Install/Update eaccelerator:

cd /ea
rm -rf ./eaccelerator*
rm -rf /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-*
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/eaccelerator/eaccelerator/eAccelerator%200.9.6.1/eaccelerator...
tar xvfj eaccelerator-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2
cd eaccelerator-0.9.6.1
export PHP_PREFIX="/usr/local"
$PHP_PREFIX/bin/phpize
./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/bin/php-config
make
make install
cd /tmp
rm -fr /tmp/eaccelerator
mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
chmod 0777 /tmp/eaccelerator
vi /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Add/Edit right after "Windows Extensions":

zend_extension="/ea/eaccelerator-0.9.5.3/modules/eaccelerator.so"
eaccelerator.shm_size="32"

Tags: PHP / MySQL

New Server Checklist for directadmin (2009)

-Add all your ips in directadmin under "IP management"
(and assign 2 ips to admin)
http://xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2222/CMD_IP_MANAGER

-Register nameserver at registrar
(namecheap.com is my fav; networksolution.com is the worst for this... it's not longer an option you can click on the website, you have to send an email request for this)

-Add nameservers to server:
1. go to user level, and add the new domain you registered (leave default settings, and tweak them after)
2. go back to reseller level, and click "nameserver" and select 2 ips you want to use and click "create" then set the 2 new nameservers for "Set the Nameservers that will be assigned to new users" (it should be added by default)

-Share nameserver ips (so you're able to add other domains to them):

Tags: Server howto linux server

httpd causing high CPU load in CentOS / DirectAdmin

If you did TOP in ssh, and noticed httpd process has a high cpu load, and has been running for a long time (e.g. over 5 minutes) then you might try lowering your MaxRequestsPerChild.


vi /etc/httpd/conf/extra/httpd-mpm.conf

Now change your MaxRequestsPerChild from 1000 to 20...


StartServers 5
MinSpareServers 10
MaxSpareServers 20
ServerLimit 812
MaxClients 812
MaxRequestsPerChild 20


service httpd restart

Magento default sort order

In order to specify the default sort order of the product listing open up your 'catalog.xml' (this is tested in magento 1.4): desc To order products by a specific order, e.g. to order products by the order specified under category listing: set in your admin: yoursite.com/admin/system_config/edit/section/catalog/
Product listing sort by: Best Value
And for those wondering where 'category products' is... it's located here: /admin/admin/catalog_category/ (under "Category Products" tab, when you click on any category)
Tags: magento

How to fix Traktor not keeping play count or mp3 comment changes

So... Here I was playing sets on my new Traktor S4 on my 2010 iMac, and noticed that Traktor was acting weird--comments were getting erased, ratings were disappearing, play counts weren't being kept. In other words,Traktor's explorer worked on some files and not others.

I tried changing file permissions, reinstalling Traktor, etc... nothing solved the problem... Doing research didn't show me any concrete solutions (e.g. change the play count settings; this didn't work).

Then it occurred to me, I haven't defragmented my Windows PC in over 2 months. And a few weeks before, I had my windows PC sync all my mp3 files to my iMac.

So long story short, the mp3 files were messed up ("garbage at the end of file")...

The solution

Tags: windows traktor native instruments osx

How to uninstall multipletablerates from magento

Multiple Table Rates (aka multipletablerates) was a very popular extension in the magento 1.3 and earlier days... However, after several magento versions this extension basically became completely unstable/buggy (this is normal as it only lists magento 1.1 compatability)... Even so, it still worked on magento 1.3 with a few minor bugs... Then later down the road other extensions came up (mostly paid) that provided similar functionality, plus some, and minus the bugs...

Tags: magento extensions

Magento Catalog Price Rules bugs

Magento's "Catalog Price Rules" was always a buggy experience, ever since magento 1.3... I don't know what's going with the development, but it's still buggy up to 1.4.1 ...

So here are a couple of fixes I found.

Magento 1.4.0.1:

source: http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/194930/#t245120

1. Open up Observer.php in /app/code/core/Mage/CatalogRule/Model/
2. Find the dailyCatalogUpdate() method
3. At the end of the method, before “return $this;”, add:
$this->applyAllRules( $this );
4. (Not sure if this step is necessary) Open up /app/code/core/Mage/CatalogRule/etc/config.xml
5. Find the crontab > jobs > catalogrule_apply_all area
6. Change
<cron_expr>0 1 * * *</cron_expr>

Tags: magento

Magento 1.4 product-name quotes are converted to html and then escaped

After upgrading from magento 1.3 to 1.4, if your product headings used quotes " " or ampersands & , then magento may convert these into HTML and then escape that HTML counterparts hence showing e.g.:

"Thermo Balance" Tub & Shower Valve Rough In Valve

like:

&quot;Thermo Balance&quot; Tub &amp; Shower Valve Rough In Valve

The fix is to go into "view.phtml" and change:

            <h1 class="product-name">
                <?php echo $_helper->productAttribute($_product, $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()), 'name') ?>
            </h1>

to

            <h1 class="product-name">
                <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName())?>
            </h1>

Tags: howto magento

Disable scroll wheel zoom in Firefox

This is probably an annoyance for all those that use keyboard CTRL commands (like, CTRL-C and CTRL-V) and accidentally keep hitting CTRL + mouse scroll wheel, which zooms in and out, or enlarges and decreases text size in your browser...

Here's how to disable that in firefox...

Firefox:

In your address bar, type in

about:config

search for

mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action

Change the value to "0"

Restart your browser, and you're all set.

Google Chrome

Nothing available at the time of this writing...

Tags: firefox annoyances browser

How to remove <br /> added by magento.

In case you're wondering why your product description is all spaced out, then that's because magento is adding automatic line breaks into the content description area...

To get rid of it... look for

nl2br

specifically in description.phtml you'll see

<div class="std">
    <?php echo $this->helper('catalog/output')->productAttribute($this->getProduct(), nl2br($this->getProduct()->getDescription()), 'description') ?>
</div>

it should look like this after you take the nl2br out:

<div class="std">
    <?php echo $this->helper('catalog/output')->productAttribute($this->getProduct(), ($this->getProduct()->getDescription()), 'description') ?>
</div>

Tags: magento code

Magento 1.4 toolbar error (How to properly upgrade to Magento 1.4)

In case you upgraded to magento 1.4, and noticed that your category listings that require pagination (page 1, 2, 3) no longer show, here's the fix...

1. copy the new 1.4 toolbar.phtml from

app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml

and paste it into your custom theme

app/design/frontend/*/YOURTHEME/template/catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml

(note: make sure you put this into your currently used theme directory. If you installed a theme via Admin-->System-->Design then get the name of the theme from there)

2. edit your app/design/frontend/*/YOURTHEME/layout/catalog.xml

Find:

<block type="catalog/product_list_toolbar" name="product_list_toolbar" template="catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml">

Tags: magento

How to remove Yoast MetaRobots from Magento

In case you want to upgrade to magento 1.4, and have Yoast MetaRobots installed, you'll have to uninstall it first, since it's not compatible with 1.4.

Here's how:

1. uninstall it from magento connect
2. Remove the config xml file from /app/etc/modules/Yoast_Metarobots.xml
3. Remove the module files and directories from /app/code/community/yoast/Metarobots/
4.Clear your cache
SSH into your root magento directory and:

rm -rf var/cache/*

5. run this SQL query (easily done in phpMyAdmin)

DELETE FROM `eav_attribute` WHERE `eav_attribute`.`attribute_code` = 'meta_robots';
DELETE FROM `core_resource` WHERE CODE = 'metarobots_setup';

You should be good to go after this...

Tags: magento extensions

Drupal: How to create a View that shows results only from the current node

Let's say you want to create a Views block that shows on a bunch of different pages/nodes that have multiple (imagefield) images per page, and you want the block to dynamically display ONLY the images from the particular node you're on--and not display images from other nodes.

This is how you would do it:

1. Create your view as you normally would.
2. Add "Node: Nid" under "Arguments".
3. Select "Provide Default Argument" under "Action to take if argument is not present:"
4. Select "Node ID from URL" under "Default argument type:"
5. Leave everything else as is...
6. Hit "Update" and then "Save"... and you're done.

Tags: Drupal

How to search and replace text in multiple files in linux

Here's how to replace a string of text in multiple files under a specific directory and all it's sub directories.

cd /to/directory/containing/files
find . -name '*.php' | xargs perl -pi -e "s/OLDSTRING/'NEWSTRING'/g;"

Real world example:

Let's say we want to replace the following in every .php file:

'profile', 'load_profile'

with new string

'profile_load_profile'

Hence, we do the following...

cd /home
find ./ -name '*.php' | xargs perl -pi -e "s/'profile', 'load_profile'/'profile_load_profile'/g;"

Tags: linux admin php

How to install mod_expires using custombuild

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
mkdir -p custom/ap2
cp configure/ap2/configure.apache custom/ap2/configure.apache
vi custom/ap2/configure.apache

add: --enable-expires

so it looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
"./configure" \
        "--prefix=/etc/httpd" \
        "--exec-prefix=/etc/httpd" \
        "--bindir=/usr/bin" \
        "--sbindir=/usr/sbin" \
        "--sysconfdir=/etc/httpd/conf" \
        "--enable-so" \
        "--enable-dav" \
        "--enable-dav-fs" \
        "--enable-dav-lock" \
        "--enable-suexec" \
        "--enable-deflate" \
        "--enable-unique-id" \
        "--with-suexec-caller=apache" \
        "--with-suexec-docroot=/" \
        "--with-suexec-gidmin=100" \
        "--with-suexec-logfile=/var/log/httpd/suexec_log" \
        "--with-suexec-uidmin=100" \
        "--with-suexec-userdir=public_html" \
        "--with-suexec-bin=/usr/sbin/suexec" \
        "--with-included-apr" \
        "--with-pcre=/usr/local" \
        "--includedir=/usr/include/apache" \
        "--libexecdir=/usr/lib/apache" \
        "--datadir=/var/www" \
        "--localstatedir=/var" \
        "--enable-logio" \
        "--enable-ssl" \
        "--enable-rewrite" \
        "--enable-proxy" \
        "--with-ssl=/usr" \
        "--enable-headers" \
        "--enable-expires"

./build clean
./build apache
service httpd restart

you may need to recompile php after this

./build php

Tags: linux apache

Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation and the $PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable.

if you try running the following:

phpize

and get this error

$PHP_PREFIX/bin/phpize
Configuring for:
PHP Api Version: 20041225
Zend Module Api No: 20060613
Zend Extension Api No: 220060519
Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation and the
$PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable. Then, rerun this script.

Then it's because you don't have autoconf installed.

To fix this error, do the following:

yum install autoconf

or you can install from source (if you want to use the latest version)


cd /usr/local/src/

/* find latest version of m4 here: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/ */

Tags: Server Linux

How to remove Paypal Quick Checkout button from Magento when using Paypal.

If you disable "guest checkout" in magento -- and are using PayPal -- guest check is still possible via Paypal button--it will show below the "Proceed to Checkout" button.

In order to completely remove the possibility of Guest checkout, you'll need to alter the following:

app/design/frondend/default/YOURTEMPLATE/template/paypal/link.phtml

  • copy link.phtml to link-01.phtml or whatever
  • open/edit link.phtml and delete (or comment out) everything.
Tags: paypal magento

How to add custom javascript into the drupal webform module <form> <submit>

Recently, one of our clients asked to have custom tracking code implemented into their form submissions.

Since the client's site is built on Drupal, all forms are dynamically generated using the Webform module.

Their marketing company instructed us to add an 'onclick' code to :

<input type="submit" class="form-submit" value="Receive Coupons" id="edit-submit" name="op" onclick=tracking("track_submit_quote") />

However, since the Webform module creates all forms dynamically, there was no convenient way of hard coding the code into the form... i.e. there was no way for this to be done via webform admin.

Tags: Drupal module

How to install Windows 7 RC using a thumb drive

It's no secret, Windows 7 is the best windows ever--it doesn't matter that the RC build 7100 not the final version, it's still a LOT better and faster than the latest and most optimized Windows Vista.

OK... anyhow... some people don't have CD/DVD drives in their PCs, so using a thumb drive is usually the best way to go.

In Windows Vista

Tags: windows