Cecko's Lab

In my last project, I had to deal with the following task: All registered customers and all guest customers who tick the “Create an account for later use” option on the checkout page to get free shipping in combination with the OneStepCheckout extension of Magento. This was the first time I had to manage a task of the kind, and in situations like this, I first decided to ask Google for help.

And I came across this page: Free shipping only for registered users where Srdjan Bajic had provided a solution. As I mentioned at the start, this should work with OneStepCheckout and now I am going to show you how I implemented it in OneStepCheckout.
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In Magento If you have case when you need to check if some object is new ( just created ) in after save callback, in some function where you use $object->save() or somewhere else, you can use next method:

$object->isObjectNew();

This function is available in all Magento CE releases >= 1.4.0.0
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Have you ever had problems with custom fonts embedding, while trying to generate PDF ducoments in Magento or using Zend Framework. May be I found solution for you, If you get next error message:

“This font cannot be embedded in the PDF document. If you would like to use it anyway, you must pass Zend_Pdf_Font::EMBED_SUPPRESS_EMBED_EXCEPTION in the $options parameter of the font constructor.”

As a result of my research I decided, that the problem comes from Zend Framework core and seems, that it doesn’t recognize correctly if your custom font can be embedded if has some embedding permissions.

What I mean, when say embedding permissions:

• Licensed for print and preview embedding
• Licensed for editable embedding
• Licensed for modification

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Really busy 3 weeks for me. I had no day off, even in the weekend I worked hard, some sleepless nights, but found time to prepare something for the 1 – st birth day of domain name ceckoslab.com ( That’s the way to enjoy Palma de Mallorca )

Let me summarize what happened in the past year:

Evolution:

Thanks to @tomislavbilic who reminded me, that I don’t have favicon.
@ceckoslab has faviconless website ;P
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During the last 3 weeks I’ve had to write a couple of modules that work in the Magento admin section. From here, I got the idea to write a series of short articles about the things I learned during this period.

Quick Overview

I’ll begin with an article that describes one way of translating the labels of some of the form fields in the admin section, which are generally not subject to translation from a CSV file or the Magento inline translation system. I decided to pack my idea into a module that, if you want, you can download and use for your own purposes.

Download: CeckosLab_UntranslatableAdmin

I found another approach, that solves the same problem. You can check it on Inchoo.net blog and the articles is written by Ivan Galambos: How to translate form labels in Magento’s Admin Area …. check it, because it is possible this approach to be more useful for your needs

Personally, when working in the admin section, I prefer to have the interface translated into the default language, i.e. English. My client, however, said he’d like the interface translated into his own language.
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This article discusses the experiences, impressions and conclusions of the Magento Developer Conference held between October 10th – October 12th in Palma de Mallorca.

MDP 2010 – My viewpoint

It’s been several months after the Conference but I can say that I am still enthusiastic and still keep the positive spirit of the event.

Personally, I value MDP 2010 more as a social than as a professional experience. In fact, one of the reasons why I attended the conference was sheer curiosity – to see the community, all gathered at the same place. I wanted to prove to myself that behind the nicknames and the forum threads there were real people. It was a pleasant surprise to meet the people thanks to whose articles I made my first steps in the field of Magento.

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This article draws on my own impressions. The conclusions in it are the result of decisions I have made, which could be interpreted to mean that it is a subjective article. Please read carefully and take everything for what it is worth; this, after all, is my own opinion. I would hate to kill someone’s hopes. If you feel you have any criticism about what’s said in here, please send me your comments.

I was provoked by the fact that there are companies, which recommend Magento to their clients without realizing the need to know the architecture and capabilities of the system in advance. It also seems like Magento have made quite an impressive marketing campaign and the owners of online stores have gone crazy about the platform. I’ve noticed that some of the owners of online stores choose Magento as a platform with no preliminary examination of the system; they’ve simply heard somewhere that it’s great!
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This article does not claim that Magento is no good, in fact it works perfectly for me, but I just wouldn’t use it for every project I am doing. The choice of an e-commerce platform is serious business and you should have already examined a couple of platforms before you can say which one is the best for you.

I recommend you to read Is Magento for you? too.

A Magento Story

A while ago, I had a discussion with Stefan (one of my colleagues at the office) regarding the platform to choose in order to start a project. One of the questions was whether Magento would do the job.

I sketched the possibilities Magento gave and we decided to run a few tests the next day.
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Before 2 – 3 mounts ago I took a decision to invest some time and money and to try my luck on the market for themes for Magento.

I said, why not. Lets do some probes and to see are there possibilities for business in this area. Even more … with this I will put something in my empty portfolio ( I will put my logo on something ). Cool ahhhh …, isn’t it?

I had need of designer!

I had a chance to meet Ivo Ivanov aka Pixel Ninja. According to me he is one of the best designers in Bulgaria.

Well … the first design is ready and I rub one’s hands to cut it.

Thank you Pixel Ninja. Hope that will be one good partnership and we will work together in the future.

For curious here are some screen shots: