Category Archives: Tech topics
50 essential mobile apps [part 1]
Can you remember your “B.C.” era, the time “Before Cellphones”? Sounds practically prehistoric!
Many of us have pretty involved relationships with our mobile devices, which are equipped to offer us an integrated experience, with the ability to help us boost productivity, communicate with friends, be entertained, increase security, and so much more. It’s easy to understand why mobile app development is currently in high demand, movements like SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) are gaining steam and interest, while 2013 is being touted as “the year of responsive design.” The mobile market is ever-growing with apps that push for innovative, better user experience as mobile devices are being used to visit content, purchase goods, enjoy multimedia, and more.
We asked our Pixafy team which apps they find essential, and received an overwhelming response! We culled the list to 50 apps, for your viewing pleasure. Here’s the first installment, containing 25 essential mobile apps that Pixafy folks use on a regular basis: (more…)
Creating new templates in WordPress
The great thing about WordPress is not only is it easy to manage your own site content, but it’s easy to manage how your site looks. The Appearance tab on the left side of WordPress’ dashboard is full of all the bells and whistles needed to make your site visually stunning. And if you’ve tinkered around with the Editor in the Appearance tab, I’m sure by now you’ve realized how easy it can be to edit your current theme.
But what if the options available to you aren’t enough? Having a general style for your pages and blog posts is fine, but what if you want each page to have its own spotlight, and what if you want each category of posts to have it’s own flair? This can get really complex depending on how far you’d like to go, so for now we’ll just cover some basic techniques – how to create a page template and how to create a template for a category. (more…)
Hiding in plain sight: Lesser-known features of WordPress
Pixafy recently delved into some useful, lesser-known Magento features that may be “hiding” in plain sight. Today, we’re following up with a compilation of simple, lesser-used WordPress features from our team that can prove to be handy for users and developers, alike.
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Rewriting blocks in Magento
In the time that I’ve been working with Magento, one of the most powerful features I’ve come across is the rewrite feature. In Magento, rewriting allows developers to override and extend core Magento functionality. Below you can find examples of rewrites for blocks, models, and helpers; we’ll start out with blocks. (more…)
Hiding in plain sight: Lesser-known features of Magento
Magento’s robust and flexible eCommerce platform offers its users the ability to deeply customize and fine-tune their sites, utilizing tools that can help grow and manage online businesses. With such feature-rich options, there are bound to be some “hidden” tools within Magento that can prove to be useful. We asked our Pixafy team to identify some lesser-known features in Magento they have found to be handy, and are sharing the results with you.
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Creating a Magento custom model
In this tutorial, we will create a custom model that uses a different name than the Module name. The Module tree will look like as shown in below:
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 |
-Pixafy/ -Block/ -controllers/ -Model/ -Resource/ -Custommodel/ -Collection.php -Custommodel.php -Custommodel.php -etc/ -config.xml -sql/ |
8 common mistakes developers make in Magento
In a previous post, we shared our team’s notes of common mistakes developers make in WordPress. Of course, here at Pixafy we work on multiple platforms, so we now turn our attention to Magento.
Having completed numerous Magento sites here at Pixafy, and numerous certified developers on staff, we have seen it all! Our team has again compiled some great tips to avoid making mistakes. We break it down evenly, with four tips for front-end developers and designers, and four for programmers and engineers: (more…)
Understanding WordPress’ $args variable – $args ye scurvy lads
$args. What is this $args? If you’ve ever seen this before in the WordPress codex or in a template, you might have already asked yourself two things. One, what the heck do people do with this? Two, why does it look synonymous to pirate lingo? (more…)
Sending emails programmatically in Magento
Sometimes you may find yourself having to send an email after a particular action has occurred; for example, you have a custom module that allows you to add a product to a list of favorites and would like to email the user that their list has has been updated. While working with Magento, I have found myself having to do this often. After consulting with my fellow developers, I found out how to send emails programmatically in Magento. (more…)
25 essential Twitter accounts for developers
Great developers are always learning. They know that there’s always room to grow, and with a rapidly-expanding list of cutting edge technologies to wrangle with, it’s imperative to stay informed. Thankfully, there are many resources that help developers increase their knowledge base, including plenty of free or low-cost tutorial sites, blogs, and even Twitter streams that are readily available on the web.
Twitter can actually be a useful tool for tech-minded learners to keep abreast of interesting trends, development tips, and new releases. Pixafy asked our own developers which Twitter accounts they find essential and received a wide range of responses, from accounts that are informative, to inspirational, to just plain fun!
Here are 25 developer-centric Twitter accounts we like – no guarantees, but following them *just* may help you become a more amazing rockstar developer! (more…)
