Book Image

Magento 1.8 Development Cookbook

By : Bart Delvaux, Nurul Ferdous
Book Image

Magento 1.8 Development Cookbook

By: Bart Delvaux, Nurul Ferdous

Overview of this book

<p>Magento is an open source e-commerce platform which has all the functionality to function from small to large online stores. Its architecture makes it possible to extend the functionalities with plugins where a lot of them are shared by the community. This is the reason why the platform is liked by developers and retailers.</p> <p>A practical developer guide packed with recipes that cover all the parts of Magento development. The recipes will start with the simple development exercises and get the more advanced as the book progresses. A good reference for every Magento developer!</p> <p>This book starts with the basics. The first thing is to create a test environment. Next, the architecture, tools, files and other basics are described to make you ready for the real work.</p> <p>The real work starts with the simple things like theming and catalog configuration. When you are familiar with this, we will move on to more complex features such as module and database development. When you have survived this, we will move on to the last part of making a shop ready for launch: performance optimization and testing. This book will guide you through all the development phases of Magento, covering the most common pitfalls through its recipes.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Magento 1.8 Development Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Adding widgets to the layout


In the previous recipe, we described the Magento layout blocks. Writing layout XML files is not so easy as there is a graphical interface to add blocks to the layout. This interface is called widgets.

Getting ready

We will add a product link to the left column of the category page. Go to the backend and navigate to CMS | Widgets.

How to do it...

In the following steps, we will configure a widget for the category pages.

  1. Choose Add new widget instance.

  2. In the next form, choose the configuration shown in the following screenshot:

  3. Click on Continue and the following screen shows up:

  4. Fill in the form with the following values:

    • Widget Instance Title: Widget-category-left-product

      This is the title of the widget in the backend. A structural name is easy when working with a lot of widgets.

    • Assign to Store Views: All Store Views

      In the Widget Options tab, you have to choose the product.

  5. Save the widget. Click on Save and Continue Edit. The widget instance is now saved but nothing...