I just updated the Ultimate SEO 2.x plugin to Ultimate SEO 2.105. Seems to work fine.
All that will be required (once it is released) is to uninstall and reinstall using the plugin manager.
Currently I only release plugins together with the corresponding ZenMagick version. Once ZenMagick hits version 1.0 and the API becomes frozen, it should be possible to update and release plugins independently.
Based on a recent, somewhat amusing email conversation, I’d like to add a couple comments on the demo theme.
Basically, the demo store is the place where I put stuff that illustrates various aspects of ZenMagick themes. There are:
extra/controller)extra/resultlist)l10n and i18n settingslocal.php)zm_field_messages(..))A very similar list is actually on the demo theme’s index page.
So, creating a new theme by copying the demo theme and renaming the folder and theme info class will give you all that. It will also give you some things you might not have wanted like:
These are the result of the custom controller and language settings. So, if in doubt, you can delete whatever files you copied from the demo theme (only exception being the theme info class).
Alternatively, you might want to create a new theme from scratch to avoid some confusion.
So, thanks for making this Monday a little bit more bearable 
It’s about time to give a rough outline of what happens when ZenMagick processes a request. This is assuming a normal GET request, even though POST is virtually the same - the only difference being that the controller will call processPost() rather than processGet(). (more…)
A quick reflection on release cycles.
So far I have released early and often. It’s probably not always pure fun for people trying those releases, but it get’s the job done and ZenMagick is now a much more stable product than it used to be even just a few month ago.
So, with more substantiell changes ahead I wonder if it would be a good idea to start releasing release candidates. The number of users probably doesn’t make that a useful approach, still, it would make me feel better. At least it might put off less technical savvy people until the actual release comes out.
Again: Please do not try ZenMagick on a live system if you haven’t done the same thing on a test machine and you are sure you understand what ZenMagick is about!
I don’t mind the support - I’ve had days where emailing felt more like IM’ing. However, it’s your business that is suffering and you’ll just end up being someone that doesn’t like ZenMagick for the wrong reasons at all.
As always, feedback would be much appreciated.
A fair question I hear sometimes is about site actually using ZenMagick. So here’s a quick list that I will update from time to time. If you know about sites not on this list I’d be glad to hear about that…
There are also a number of test sites around that do not appear to be of any use right now.
I also know about a few more that are currently under development and not live yet. Please let me know if you want to have your site listed here (or wherever the appropriate place is eventually going to be!).
EDIT: Just ran ino another site: Tod’s Pod Repair - I have to admin Iam really impressed by the design. And again, the pages seem to validate- good stuff. Should the designer/developer read this, I’d like to get some feedback (or do I know you already??)
Not a very original title, I have to admit, but it’s hard to find good titles when writing about the same topic all the time..
Object Cache
This is one idea had some time ago about how to speed up some of the dynamic settings that, despite being dynamic, do not change very often. One example would be the URL mapping, another could be the validation rules.
The plan would be to serialize those objects and store in a file based cache similar to the page cache. If a valid cache entry exists, that would be used, otherwise the code would be loaded as before. (more…)
Framework
I’ve been thinking about the whole MVC stuff inside ZenMagick. Some of it is mixed up with very zen-cart specific code, but a lot of it is very generic. So, while I am quite clear about the fact that the world doesn’t need another PHP based MVC framework, I still ponder from time to time the chances of splitting that code into a subproject to make it easier to maintain. Not having to keep the sometimes obscure zen-carts in mind might actually improve the overall quality of the code. (more…)
It’s been a good week for ZenMagick.
The plugin architecture got streamlined a bit and should be faster, too. In particular, the storefront code will only load plugins that are actually enabled (and installed!).
There have been also some additions that allow plugins now to add custom validation rules and run custom SQL code. The second is particular handy, as it removes a manual step from the installation process.
I have managed to add two plugins this week and I am sure this will make some people quite happy. (more…)
Even the most dynamic website includes some static pages. Usually those would contain stuff like contact details and other things that do not change often enough to justify creating a management interface (unless you are using a CMS, of course).
Stores are now exceptions to that rule and zen-cart offers two ways of managing static content:
zen-cart/includes/languages/english/html_includes folder (or a theme subfolder).This post will look what is involved in creating a new define page.
(more…)
Pretty much every release cycle had a phase where I would go around in circles trying to solve problems which depended on other issues that related to other problems… You get the picture, I guess…
This time it’s image handling. I started looking into writing a plugin that would make ImageHandler2 work in ZenMagick. As it turns out, the current image code sucks somehow.
To be sure, there is some not so bad stuff there, but mostly it’s code that documents a time when I was still sufferening from the inital zen-cart include/require shock. There is an amazing number of functions and code in ZenMagick that somewhat independantly try to do something meaningful with images.
In order to unwrap all that I’ll be spending the next days or weeks rewriting the image code in ZenMagick. There will be a few template changes required, but that should mostly be changed function names plus perhaps a couple parameters of those functions.
Once that is done, I’ll be back and hopefully get ImageHandler2 working in no time
