Paul Tocknell
Just another WordPress weblog
Magento Add to Cart and Image Zoom not working
Dec 30th
I ran across another problem tonight with my Magneto installation. For no good apparent reason my Add to Cart and Image Zoom suddenly stopped working. I used the Firefox Error Console and this was my full error message:
Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)" nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)" location: "JS frame :: http://www.yoursite.com/magento/js/index.php?c=auto&f=,prototype/prototype.js,prototype/validation.js,scriptaculous/builder.js,scriptaculous/effects.js,scriptaculous/dragdrop.js,scriptaculous/controls.js,scriptaculous/slider.js,varien/js.js,varien/form.js,varien/menu.js,mage/translate.js,mage/cookies.js,varien/product.js,calendar/calendar.js,calendar/calendar-setup.js :: anonymous :: line 1528" data: no]
After a lot of searching….well, I found nothing. All the answers on the Magneto forum were no use to me at all. After about 30 minutes of searching though, I did find an answer that works (at least for now). I had to re-install the Lib_Js_Prototype using the Magnento Connect Manager.
Here is how you do that from the Magneto admin backend:
1) System – Magento Connect – Magento Connect Manager
2) You will be prompted for your admin user name and password
3) Select Lib_Js_Prototype and then choose from the drop down action menu Re-Install.
4) Click on Commit Changes
If everything goes ok, you should see something like this:
This seemed to solve the problem for me….at least for now. Hopefully this works for you or at least helps you out somehow.
Captain Andrew Sampson House
Nov 9th
We just received our Christmas 2009 Pottery Barn catalog. My daughter saw all the pretty Christmas photos and thought it would make great material for a collage. One of the many pictures she cut out was of a very nicely holiday decorated home that my daughter was convinced was located in our neighborhood. The house is actually featured on the Pottery Barn front cover. I looked closely at the picture of the house and saw that above the front door was a placard that read “Captain Andrew Sampson House 1850″. Ok, so who was Captain Andrew Sampson and where is this house located?
Like any good detective, my first step was Google and from there I learned that yes the house was built in 1850 and it is located at 1157 Division St, Napa, California. Google maps also lists a business at that address, a company called “Benefits Plus”. In fact, Google Maps street view has a great shot of the home:
Ok, so now that I know where the house was located, I needed to find out just who was Captain Andrew Sampson?
I emailed the Napa Public Works Department and they were nice enough to send me the “Historic Resources Inventory” which notes among other things, the description and significance of this particular property:
The Andrew Sampson House is an excellent example of the 19th century practice in Napa of creating a two story house by raising the original one story cottage and building a new first floor. The original cottage, now the second floor, is believed to have been built in 1850, soon after Stephen Broadhurst bought the land near the Napa River from Joseph P. Thompson, one of Napa’s first settlers. Andrew Sampson, originally from Sweden, purchased the property in 1871. He had an active role in the Napa River trade as he ran a tow boat line, operated a schooner between Napa and San Francisco and had a drayage business in Napa Valley. The house raising took place c.1900. The house stands on a fieldstone foundation and is frame with shiplap siding. Note the variation in window moldings on the first and second floors. More recent additions are a wing to the rear and extension in the gable end and. the front porch and steps. The house remained in the family until 1974. Two Sequoias in the front yard were planted by Andrew Sampson’s wife, Olinda, in the 1870s.
Wow. Cool. So the first story was actually an addition to the house. That’s a pretty neat fact.
The fact sheet that they sent also included an old photo taken of the house. It’s pretty grainy, but you can tell even from this photo that a lot of work has been done to the house:
So anyhow that’s all I’ve been able to find out about the Captain Andrew Sampson House 1850. If you have any more information, be sure to share it.
Add an additional admin user in Magento
Oct 31st
This morning I probably spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to add an additional admin user to Magento. And although it turned out to be really easy, it took some digging to find the answer on the net. I finally found the answer on the forum board:
- In your magento admin backend, go to Admin> System> Permissions> Users.
- Click “Add new user”
- Enter the user’s information.
- Be sure to click on the “user roles” tab on the left menu to assign the account to a role. (You can create more limited-capability roles using ADMIN> System> Permissions> Roles so that users can’t reset anything too deadly if you want.)
- Save user.
Hopefully this post helps to save someone else wasting 15 minutes looking for the answer on the magento forums.
Hyperlink your header logo
Oct 31st
I was working on my mom’s Wordpress blog tonight and came up with a custom logo in Photoshop. I figured out how to insert it without a problem, but was struggling with a good way to make it “clickable” and hyperlink it to the blog’s homepage. That is until I found this lively link:
Make your logo clickable | Wwohn.com
And I quote:
If you cannot find the <img> the logo is probably the background image of a <div> or <td>. this would mean that you should make the entire <div> or <td> clickable.
You can make a <div> clickable with the following line of code:
<div onclick="location.href='http://www.yourwebsite.com/';" style="cursor: pointer;"></div>
You can make a <td> clickable with the following line of code:
<td onclick="location.href='http://www.yourwebsite.com/';" style="cursor: pointer;"></td>
In the examples above, pointer of the mouse changes if the mouse hovers the <div> or <td>. This provides visitors an indication that the area they are hovering is clickable.
You can read the rest of the article here:
http://www.wwohn.com/clickable-logo/
How do I flush my computer’s DNS?
Oct 31st
Most DNS clients cache the results of name resolution requests. This speeds up name resolution if multiple lookups are done to the same address, such as is common when browsing the web.Sometimes a bad DNS entry will be cached and you will need to either flush the DNS cache to get rid of it, or wait up to 24 hours for it to be dropped from the cache automatically.
How to Flush DNS in Microsoft WindowsIn Microsoft Windows, you can use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache:
C:\>ipconfig /flushdns
Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.
You can also use the command ipconfig /displaydns to view the DNS resolver cache.
Twitter Font
Oct 31st
Have you always wondered what font is used in the twitter logo? This information can be useful if say, you are trying to create your own take on the logo (as I am).
Well, a little bit of searching and I found it! The name of the font used in the twitter logo is “Pico-alphabet” and here is the link to the site where you can downlad that font for free:
Create a custom page template in Wordpress
Oct 31st
David Risley dot com shows us how to create a custom page template in our wordpress themes. This can be very handy if you are trying to create a custom look for a particular page. Like for instance, say you want a wordpress landing page without any sidebars well, this would be a tutorial you definitely want to take a look at:
All Wordpress themes have a file called page.php. This is your template file for all pages you have on your blog (remember, pages are distinctly different than posts). The page.php
file is your default page template. To create a new one, just open that
file in any text editor 
then “save as” a different file name. In my
case, I named the template for my sales page signup_page.php.
Now, at the very top of this new file, you’re going to want a block of PHP code as follows:
/*
Template Name: [your page name here]
*/
?>
This is a PHP comment. Leave the “Template Name:” in place, but you
need to change the name of the page. Once you have done that, upload
this new file to your blog theme’s folder.
Then, in Wordpress, when you go to add or edit a page, scroll way
down and you’ll see a setting for “Page Template”. You should see your
new page template listed in the dropdown, using the name you entered
above. To the right, you can see what my dropdown list looks like in my
own Wordpress admin panel. I have many different custom page templates
in my system, all for different purposes.
How To Use a Custom Page Template In Wordpress | David Risley dot com
