Shane and I had a tough enough day yesterday getting the Ubercart Option Images Module (uc_option_image) to work on an eCommerce site we are developing for a client in Dublin; plenty of head scratching with some mild cursing - but we finally got it running very nicely indeed and have decided to write a few notes on the process in the hope that they might help someone else in a similar pickle.

Q: How can you easily specify an alternative page template to be used when displaying a node of a particular content type in Drupal 6?

A: Use the Node Template module, supply an alternative page template file in your target theme folder and configure your content type to use this new template.

One of the most 'curious' tasks in getting a magento eCommerce shop ready to go live is the task of getting all of the email templates altered so that they contain the correct information for your new shop. There's millions of these templates with rather annoying literal strings in 'em like 'Demo Store' etc. For some strange reason the default templates do not pull things like the store name etc. from the (available) backend variables.

Q: How can I change the default ubercart 'add to cart' button on the 'add to cart' form to a nice image button of my choosing?

A: The deafult button can be 'morphed' into an image button through the application of some crafty css as follows:

Q: How do I add a reference to a java script file from a magento CMS page by using only the CMS mechanism, without having to edit any layout xml files like page.xml?

A: Place a 'reference' block in the 'Custom Design' section of your page's settings and in this place an 'action' tag to include the javascript file.

If you need to resize the category image as it keeps shrinking to 475px wide, you can do so by deleting the 'width="475"' from the following template:
app/design/frontend/default/default/template/catalog/category/view.phtml

You might also need to turn off or clear the cache in the backend at: System --> Cache Management --> Image Cache --> Clear.

When you try to install magento 1.3.x on Blacknight Unix hosting you may (immediatly) get the following error:

'Whoops, it looks like you have an invalid PHP version.'

Well, don't panic, this is a very similar situation to the one outlined in this earlier drupal post. Your hosting does have the correct version of PHP installed (5.2.x) it's just that the default version is an older one. You just need to disable the older PHP version, wait a few minutes and things should be ok then.

Wouldn't it be great if you could merge the best Content Management System with the best e Commerce system going? Sound too far fetched? Well it's something we've been looking into, mainly because the usefulness of something like this would be simply mind blowing.

We have been looking into how to produce custom reports for magento and I found this interesting discussion which presents some tantalising clues on how this may be achieved:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/27928/

and now, the search continues!

Today I was thinking wouldnt it be great if Drupal (our favorite CMS) and Magento (the great new eCommerce system) could be integrated. You'd get a combination of the best CMS system around with all the flexability that Drupal offers with a great shopping cart system.

Well it turns out I'm not the first person to think it would be a great idea, there's a Drupal Group dedicated to the project.

Magento meet Drupal, Drupal meet Magento