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Remove Sidebar Callouts in Magento Layout

July 20, 2010 By SEM Truth Leave a Comment

Here are a coupe of quick references for removing sidebar callouts in either a template/layout .xml file or custom page Layout per page. I used the following to remove some unwanted blocks from the homepage sidebar by updating the XML Layout for the homepage under the Design tab, such as the cart which is unnecessary on a website homepage.

<reference name=”right”>
<action method=”unsetChild”><name>cart_sidebar</name></action>
<action method=”unsetChild”><name>catalog.compare.sidebar</name></action>
<action method=”unsetChild”><name>right.reports.product.viewed</name></action>
<action method=”unsetChild”><name>right.permanent.callout</name></action>
</reference>

Filed Under: Magento Layout Updates, Magento Tutorials, Website Design

Magento 1.4.1.0 Upgrade Error

July 14, 2010 By SEM Truth Leave a Comment

Fatal error:  Call to a member function toHtml() on a non-object in /public_html/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Layout.php on line 529

The line in page.xml that seems to cause the problem is

<block type=”core/profiler” output=”toHtml”/>

Magento now uses an updated call:

<block type=”core/profiler” output=”toHtml” name=”core_profiler”/>

This should be one of the initial changes that can get your site live and updated when upgrading to Magento 1.4.1.0

Filed Under: Upgrade Fixes, Website Design

Custom SEF Sidebar Navigation For Magento

July 13, 2010 By SEM Truth Leave a Comment

I wanted to share a quick snippet of code that I created for adding a custom navigation section to your Magento left column area. I currently created this navigation area for a client to replace the layered navigation. The layered navigation has a lot of great features and organization but probably better severs as a multi -select drop down. Also in the previous versions of Magento the layered navigation was not search engine friendly.

This is not currently the case but I still find that there is not enough control over the category / subcategory display within the layered navigation. This custom navigation block could be used above some of the other build in features such as price, manufacturer etc. that is simple to accomplish with the layered navigation.

Also of note, I have found including other SEO centralized developers, that the layered navigation simply refreshs that page, so should you have content on the main category page, the layered navigation link creates confusion becuase the page content continues to display. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Magento Tutorials, Website Design