I’ve started a series of small projects to make the Magento admin much easier/faster to use. These are small extensions that have helped me develop and manage my Magento store. This is more a blog than a public announcement.
These are my goals and my accomplishments if applicable. ETA for next flush of extension releases is sometime after Christmas, but don’t worry, my organization and I have been keeping up with our commitments!
1. Mass Product Relater 1.2.0.1 compatibility coming soon!
- Select a bunch of products in the grid and more than 12 mass-action operations on them.
STATUS: Released Version 2! Tonnes of new features so please check it out!
2. Enhanced Admin Product Grid
STATUS: Released Version 1.3
Features:
> Grid Row Highlighter: Highlight a bunch of rows by dragging your cursor over the rows while holding CTRL. Each highlighted row will be checked off. This will apply to all grids (including the catalog grid).
> Mass Product Relater Functionality: Inherits all the features from the Mass Product Relater I’ve released.
> Catalog Grid Thumbnails: Shows product thumbnail images in the catalog product grid in a very organized and maintainable manor.
> Persistent Catalog Grid Settings: Set the default page size, default sort, default columns to show, etc. The settings will be stored in your Store Config so you can save some time.
> Mass Product Refresh: Loads and saves a bunch of products. This was built to aid in addressing a data inconsistency issue
> Quick Export; Select the export to CSV action from the mass action drop down and it’ll create a CSV with all the selected products and send it as a file to your browser.
> Custom Catalog Product Grid Columns: Lets you select which columns you want to see in the catalog product grid. For example, short description, long description, custom attributes, etc. You will also be able to change and quickly view product images thumbnails here.
> Product Image Thumbnail Column: You will be able to view product image thumbnails in a neat column in the catalog grid.
> LIVE Edit Grid; Mass Product Attribute Updater: Each catalog product cell is editable on the spot and savable via AJAX. When an option is set, there will be editable fields in the catalog product grid. You can then change what you want, and click “Save All” from the mass action selector and all the products attributes will be updated at once.
3. One URL Rewrite Per Product
- Force a specific product to only have one primary URL. With this enabled, you also have the option of either redirecting every other link to said product, or just rewriting the url to be the same as the primary URL for SEO purposes.
- This is to address issues discussed in here and here and here as well as a Magento bug I might have found (and I say that tentatively)
STATUS: Wrote the database interaction and it works… Now I need to create a standalone module and clean it up to be distributed.
4. Promoted Products
- Displays all products that have catalog rules applied in an organizable grid (like search results)
STATUS: RELEASED - Click here
5. Improved Catalog Search
- Adds extra functionality and accuracy to the catalog quick-search. Includes “relevancy” sorting.
STATUS: RELEASED - Click here
UPDATE January 1st, 2009 - Magento included this functionality in version 1.0.2, but some people still like my relevance sorting algorithm better.
6. Points and Rewards
- A points and rewards system for Magento. Customers will be able to earn and and redeem points.
STATUS: Under Development; Please send me an e-mail or PM to view the detailed proposal and ETA dates.
The private stable release is scheduled for February 23, 2009.
I love Magento because I’ve had the inconvenient burden of having to once admit to my manager that Zencart was our most favorable solution. The only thing I would change about Magento is some decent PHP documentation.
Your thoughts and opinions are welcome.
I’m taking requests!
In regards to this :
> Custom Catalog Product Grid Fields: Lets you select which columns you want to see in the catalog product grid. For example, short description, long description, custom attributes, etc.
Could you incorporate the thumb image as a field that can be displayed.. Selected to display??.
Another thought. From the customer section you can do a straight dump of the data to a csv file. What about having that as an option for the grid?. Sort of like a short-cut way of getting data
Could you incorporate the thumb image as a field that can be displayed.. Selected to display??.
Another thought. From the customer section you can do a straight dump of the data to a csv file. What about having that as an option for the grid?. Sort of like a short-cut way of getting data
Showing thumbnails in the catalog grid will be an option, yes. Also, I’ve added the CSV quick export to my list too.
Does your Enhanced Grid functionality include anything in the Category page? Right now you can see all the products in a category, but you can’t just list all products and see what category they are in. What’s needed is a mass-action for adding products to a category.
I suggest you to contact the Magento team and possibly cooperate with them in implementing your extensions/changes to the later versions of Magento. This will definitely contribute to the establishment and growth of Magento.
Very interested into your work.
Especially about the grid modification.
I’d love to be able to preview a thumbnail directly in the grid, where exactly would it appear ?
I think it shouldn’t be too large or the grid will be too stretched.
Very interested into your work.
Especially about the grid modification.
I’d love to be able to preview a thumbnail directly in the grid, where exactly would it appear ?
I think it shouldn’t be too large or the grid will be too stretched.
The way I’ve got it right now is that it only shows the image when you over your mouse over a box just like in the product edit image gallery. It’s quite cool.
real great work!
What I did in one of my projects and would love to see in your codings as well would be a kind of fast-redirect-url to a product (as enhancement of 3. One URL Rewrite Per Product )
So the url www.shop.com/?sku=abc3 will take you (e.g. with a 301 redirect) to the product url. Same for www.shop.com/?order=abc3 will put the product with the SKU abc3 into the cart.
These two are really helpful because nobody knows the exact url and you always need a search for it.
Georg: Actually the 301 redirect is unnecessary since Magento’s redirect is all don’t within the framework. Other than that I’ve done exactly what you’re saying. I’m just waiting a bit to release the extension. As for your “www.shop.com/?order=abc3” ideaI think the feature is already implemented in Magento. If not, it should be easy to implement.
Thanks for staying tuned! New version (actually modular) of Mass Product Relater releases soon, and Enhanced grid is on it’s way. Mass Product Relater actually has a lot of features borrowed from Enhanced Grid.
I set the 301 because the urls can be given away and so I can be sure that any engine will just display the real url like shop.com/cat1/cat2/product.html
And did I understand you right that you now did the ?sku=abc in your extension? I will be happy to test it!
