This extension lets you hide certain states on the front end to prevent customers from selecting them during checkout, estimate shipping, payment, etc. One common issue that many users of Magento (Community and Enterprise) is the list of states (regions for non-US) displayed to customers during checkout, registration and estimate shipping. When Magento is first installed a number of items exist for the United States that are not commonly shipped to or need specific shipping rules.

States commonly excluded from Magento stores:

• Alaska
• American Samoa
• Federated States Of Micronesia
• Guam
• Hawaii
• Marshall Islands
• Northern Mariana Islands
• Palau
• Puerto Rico
• Virgin Islands

In the case of my medical supplies business we had flat rate shipping to the lower 48 states from our supplier and were charged very high rates to ship to Hawaii, Alaska and other US territories and military locations.  We wanted to handle shipments to these locations offline to ensure we did not lose our shirts on shipping.

One way to achieve this is to modify the collections.php file here (created local version):  /app/code/core/Mage/Directory/Model/Mysql4/Region/Collection.php to alter the regions array returned.  If you like getting into the code and want to redo this update when you upgrade Magento this might work well for you.

There is now a FREE way remove displayed options in shipping and billing in the administrative interface via a new extension.  The “Remove or Change States and Regions” extension is the first extension developed in a joint venture between my company and Eltrino consulting (a team of Magento Rockstars based in Keiv).

Video Demonstration

Instructions for use:

Here is how it works:

1. Download and install the extension from Magento Connect
2. Once installed a new menu item appears under “System” > “Configuration” > “Sales” with the title “Region Management”



3. After selecting “Region Management” the configuration screen is displayed.   Click “New Region Configuration” to add exclusions for a Country (multiple Countries can be configured by adding additional configurations.



4. Use the “Common Settings” select option to pre-select certain common settings or select specific values based on your needs.  The options here will be modified based on customer requests but to launch we will be providing the following options for the United States:
   • Lower 48 States – Excludes military locations, US territories and Alaska and Hawaii
   • 50 States Only – Excludes military locations and US territories
5. Save your updates and clear the Magento Cache (System > Cache Management > Flush Magento Cache).
6. Check your customer website and the excluded options will be removed.

The extension effects the system in the following ways:

• Excluded States or Regions are removed from all Store Views and Websites
• Excluded areas are not displayed as options for billing address, shipping address, estimate shipping and customer registration.

For customers who want further flexibility we are going to offer an enhanced version which allows these values to be specified by store/website and for each area (IE – allow Hawaii for registration but not for shipping address).   Please contact me if you are interested in this enhanced version and would like to give input on features and functions.

Download this free extension from Magento Connect here:  Remove or Change States and Regions

The extension is compatible with Community 1.4 – 1.6 and is currently under review for a Trusted Extension for MagentoGo.  The extension is also upgrade proof and will be modified if needed for future Magento versions.

Please let me know what you think in the comments area below.   If you have ideas for additional extensions you would like to see from the NjcMedia & Eltrino partnership please let me know.  We have around 40 extensions in mind which are all coming soon…

One of my major Magento Enterprise customers just launched the onestepcheckout extsion – http://www.onestepcheckout.com as an A/B test with the existing multi-step checkout process. We are using Google Website Optimizer to test the variations and I will have some data starting today.

I will update this post with results of the test. I know others have experienced a lift with this extension and I am excited to see how it works for us.

Just implemented as suggested in this post: http://blogs.keynote.com/the_watch/2011/09/filtering-out-web-performance-monitoring-traffic-from-google-analytics.html

As the post notes it does not apply to historic traffic so I guess I have to wait until tomorrow to see if it really works.

Thanks Keynote!

http://960.gs/

If this ever happens do the following to switch back:

1. Open up your admin panel (cPanel or other)
2. Go to phpMyAdmin (if MySql)
3. Find your Magento Database
4. Find table “core_config_data”
5. Look for the columns “web/secure/use_in_frontend” and “web/secure/use_in_adminhtml”
6. Edit both values, make them equal to “0″

After this is done you will be back in action.

Go buy something!

Ford Accessories
Lincoln Accessories
Mercury Accessories

1. Add reference to CMS block in transactional email template

 {{block type="cms/block" block_id="ford-order-confirmation-promotions" }}

2. Create CMS block, make sure identifier of block matches.
3. Test your email

Simple right? This could be taken a step further with a little code to select a CMS block based on certain conditions (customer type, purchase history, etc). Anyone want to share that code?

Copy the file “default.phtml” from here: “app/design/frontend/default/default/template/checkout/cart/item/” to your local template directory.

Something like “app/design/frontend/default/”your_template”/template/checkout/cart/item/”

Add the following under the product title:

        SKU: <?php echo $_item->getSku() ?>

Finished:

<h4 class="title"><a href="<?php echo $this->getProductUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->getProductName() ?> </a></h4>
        SKU: <?php echo $_item->getSku() ?>

What happens if you don’t have the data and you have 15,000+ items in your catalog?

• Hire someone to associate all products?
• Randomly apply products in your data feed?
• Develop custom code?

All of the above items are true for my Medical Supplies business – Medical Delivered so I needed a solution.  I decided to auto assign cross sell products on the front end on product page render.

In action: http://www.medicaldelivered.com/medline-k1-excel-wheelchair.html

Rules:

1. The item must be “visible”
2. The item must reside in the same category as the current item
3. Don’t display the item from the current product detail page

Results:

1. All products automatically have cross sells displayed
2. No need to assign products on the back end
3. BAD:  Less control over items displayed

This solution won’t work for everyone, if you are an advanced retailer you won’t want to lose this control but if you just want cross sells and don’t have the time/resources to define manually you can try the code below.

Path:  app/design/frontend/default/<template>/catalog/product/list/upsell.phtml

(you may need to create this path – make sure to replace <template> with your template name)

<?php
/**
* Magento
*
* NOTICE OF LICENSE
*
* This source file is subject to the Academic Free License (AFL 3.0)
* that is bundled with this package in the file LICENSE_AFL.txt.
* It is also available through the world-wide-web at this URL:
* http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php
* If you did not receive a copy of the license and are unable to
* obtain it through the world-wide-web, please send an email
* to license@magentocommerce.com so we can send you a copy immediately.
*
* DISCLAIMER
*
* Do not edit or add to this file if you wish to upgrade Magento to newer
* versions in the future. If you wish to customize Magento for your
* needs please refer to http://www.magentocommerce.com for more information.
*
* @category   design_default
* @package    Mage
* @copyright  Copyright (c) 2008 Irubin Consulting Inc. DBA Varien (http://www.varien.com)
* @license    http://opensource.org/licenses/afl-3.0.php  Academic Free License (AFL 3.0)
* @author        Nick Cron
* @authorweb  www.njcmedia.com
*/
?>
<?php
$_related = $this->getProduct();
// get the parent id to skip
$_parentid = $_related->getId();

if ($_related) {
// get collection of categories this product is associated with
$categories =$_related->getCategoryCollection()
->setPage(1, 1)
->load();

// if the product is associated with any category
if ($categories->count())
foreach ($categories as $_category)
{
$cur_category = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($_category->getId());

?>

<div>
<div><h4><?php echo $this->__('You may also be interested in the following product(s)') ?></h4></div>
<table cellspacing="0" id="upsell-product-table">

<tr>

<?php

$visibility = array(
Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Visibility::VISIBILITY_BOTH,
Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Visibility::VISIBILITY_IN_CATALOG
);

$products = Mage::getResourceModel('catalog/product_collection')
->addCategoryFilter($_category)
->addAttributeToFilter('visibility', $visibility)
->addAttributeToSelect('small_image');

$products->getSelect()->limit(5);

// count the number of displayed products
$_i=0;

foreach ( $products as $productModel )       {
$_related = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($productModel->getId());
$_realtedid = $_related->getId();

// prevents displaying the same product your are already on
if ($_realtedid != $_parentid && $_i<4):

?>

<td>
<p><a href="<?php echo $_related->getProductUrl() ?>"><img src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_related, 'small_image')->resize(125) ?>" width="125" height="125" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_related->getName()) ?>" /></a></p>
<h5><a href="<?php echo $_related->getProductUrl() ?>"><?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_related->getName()) ?></a></h5>

<?php echo $this->getPriceHtml($_related, true) ?>
<?php echo $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_related) ?>
</td>

<?php
// increment displayed products
$_i++;
endif;
}
?>

</tr>

<?php }
}
?>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">decorateTable('upsell-product-table')</script>
</div>

Room for improvement:

1. Display items from the back end if exist
2. Display only items with images
3. ..?

I hope this helps someone.  If you have any suggestions for improvement or code upgrades/fixes please let me know in the comments.

 <br/> 

html tags to product descriptions for display on the customer interface.  If you have created a nice description with the WYSIWYG Editor or imported HTML descriptions you most likely want to remove this behavior.   Luckily this is not hard to do.

1.  Find the file “description.phtml” here:  /app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/view/description.phtml

2. Make a local copy by copying the file to your local template.  You may need to create the same path in your Magento template (you never want to change core code for upgrade reasons).

New Path: app/design/frontend/default/<template name>/template/catalog/product/view/description.phtml

3.  Remove the “nl2br” tag

Before:

<div>
<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/output')->productAttribute($this->getProduct(), nl2br($this->getProduct()->getDescription()), 'description') ?>
</div>

After:

<div>
<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/output')->productAttribute($this->getProduct(),     $this->getProduct()->getDescription()), 'description' ?>
</div>

4.  Upload the file to your server.