Magento has automated log cleaning functionality built in, but it is not enabled by default. Here’s how to turn it on.

1. Firstly you need make sure Magento’s cron system is running.
   If you are unsure about this, see this article on setting up cron (scheduled tasks).
2. Once cron is enabled and running, simply enable log cleaning via the admin:

   System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Log Cleaning

As per the screenshot below, I like to save 1 days logs, and perform the cleaning at 4:00am each morning.

Magento stores it’s session files in var/session and I’ve seen too many Magento installations where the size of this directory has grown into the gigabytes. A quick browse of this directory should tell you whether you have a problem or not.

PHP has it’s own ‘garbage collection’ process for deleting old session files, but it’s disabled in Debian “due to the strict permissions on /var/lib/php5″
So, if you are using Debian then you’ll need to setup a simple cron script to do this garbage collection for you.

For this example, let’s say the path to your Magento installation is /path/to/magento and we want to delete session files over a week old.

1. Create a new file /path/to/magento/session_cleanup.sh

   vi /path/to/magento/session_cleanup.sh

2. Add the following 2 lines to the file

   #!/bin/sh
   find /path/to/magento/var/session -name 'sess_*' -type f -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;

3. Make sure the file is executable

   chmod u+x /path/to/magento/session_cleanup.sh

4. Now add it to your crontab

   crontab -e

   and set it to run every day, let’s say at 3am

   0 3 * * *  /bin/sh /path/to/magento/session_cleanup.sh

And we’re done.

Magento provides a shell script (cron.sh) which calls a PHP script (cron.php)
Both files are in the root directory of the Magento installation.
I like to bypass the shell script and run the PHP script directly, and I set it to run every 5 mins

To do this in Debian, you should open your crontab for editing:

crontab -e

Then add a crontab entry such as this (replacing with your path):

*/5 * * * * php -q /path/to/magento/cron.php

The default cron scheduling settings work fine for me but you can tweak them if you like to have more control:

System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Cron (Scheduled Tasks)

Note: A quick way to test your setup is to check the database table called cron_schedule. If cron is running, this table will have records in it. Remember to wait 5 mins after adding the crontab entry so it has a chance to run

For anyone comfortable with editing code, it’s easy enough to switch to HTML mode and add the class attribute manually to the desired element. But for most people, it’s far easier to select the text or image, then choose the desired style from a dropdown.

To set up this capability we need to:

1. hook into the tiny_mce_before_init filter
2. define the list of classes we wish to appear in the dropdown
3. activate the “Styles” dropdown in the editor

The format for the custom class list is {label}={class-name} seperated by semi-colons,
e.g.
“Special Style 1=special-1;Special Style 2=special-2;Special Style 3=special-3″

Using this example list of classes, the code which can go in your functions.php file is as follows:

add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init', 'add_custom_classes');
function add_custom_classes($arr_options) {
	$arr_options['theme_advanced_styles'] = "Special Style 1=special-1;Special Style 2=special-2;Special Style 3=special-3";
	$arr_options['theme_advanced_buttons2_add_before'] = "styleselect";
	return $arr_options;
}

Note: Prior to WordPress 3.1, the “Insert/edit link” dialog included a “class” drop down, which was populated by the same theme_advanced_styles list we have used here. In version 3.1 this drop down was removed by the core dev team. The technique described in this post is one way to work around this update to the WordPress admin.

You essentially need to tell WordPress to use a different version, by way of the functions wp_deregister_script and wp_register_script.

FYI at the time of writing, I’m using Fancybox Version 1.3.4 which plays nice with jQuery 1.4.3

Here’s the PHP code to go in your functions.php:

function my_enqueue_scripts() {
	wp_deregister_script('jquery');
	wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.3/jquery.min.js');
	wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}
 
add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'my_enqueue_scripts');

For more information on wp_enqueue_script, see the codex:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_enqueue_script

Check out Fancybox – jQuery Plugin here:
http://fancybox.net

Internal anchor links are very common place,
e.g. “back to top” links, or FAQ pages which list all the questions at the top.
Making them visually scroll to their target not only looks a bit fancy, it also gives some visual feedback to the user as to their new position on the page.

This is what it looks like in action, click the following link:
Scroll to comments

This technique is very simple.

1. Set up your link as you normally would,
   e.g. href=”#comments” (where comments is the id of your target)
2. Add a class=”scroll” attribute to the link element, so it now looks something like this:

   <a href="#comments" class="scroll">Scroll to comments</a>

3. Finally add the following jQuery code wherever is most appropriate

   jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
    
   	$(".scroll").click(function(event){		
   		event.preventDefault();
   		$('html,body').animate({scrollTop:$(this.hash).offset().top}, 500);
   	});
   });

And that’s all there is to it

Example scenario:

You need a conditional tag to use in your theme template, which checks if a navigation item is “current” or not. If it’s current you want to highlight it somehow using CSS.

Working example:

On Melissa’s website, the top navigation is a list of pages.
Each tutorial on her site is a child page of the main Tutorials page.
When you are viewing the Pop Art Tutorial, the little triangle above the main nav indicates that you are in the Tutorials section of the site.

Example theme code

The main nav is an unordered list, here’s the list item for Tutorials:

<li <?php if (is_page_or_descendant('Tutorials')) echo 'class="current"'; ?>>
	<a href="/tutorials">Tutorials</a>
</li>

This code checks if the current page is ‘Tutorials’ or a descendant of it.
If so, then it adds the class=”current” attribute to the list item.
CSS and jQuery are then used to position the triangle above it.

Function Definition

bool is_page_or_descendant($page)

returns TRUE if the page you’re viewing is the specified page or a descendant of it

Function Parameters

$page
(mixed) (required) Page specified by ID (integer), title (string) or path (string)

Function Code

I hope this function is as useful for you as it is for me, enjoy

function is_page_or_descendant($page) {
	if (!is_page()) return false; 
 
	// retrieve page being currently viewed
	global $wp_query;
	$obj_current_page = $wp_query->get_queried_object();
	if (empty($obj_current_page->ID)) return false; 
 
	// retrieve specified page (ID, title or path)
	if (is_numeric($page)) $obj_specified_page = get_page($page);
	else $obj_specified_page = ($page_by_path = get_page_by_path($page)) ? $page_by_path : get_page_by_title($page);
	if (empty($obj_specified_page->ID)) return false;
 
	return ($obj_specified_page->ID == $obj_current_page->ID or $obj_specified_page->ID == $obj_current_page->post_parent or in_array($obj_specified_page->ID, get_post_ancestors($obj_current_page->ID)));
}

Open up your functions.php file and add the following code:

function enable_more_buttons($buttons) {
  $buttons[] = 'hr';
 
  /* 
  Repeat with any other buttons you want to add, e.g.
	  $buttons[] = 'fontselect';
	  $buttons[] = 'sup';
  */
 
  return $buttons;
}
add_filter("mce_buttons", "enable_more_buttons");

The idea here is that you are tapping into the filter hooks which are applied to each row of buttons on the editor toolbar.

The example above adds the <hr> button to the first row of buttons. If you’d like to add to the second row you’d use the mce_buttons_2 filter hook, etc etc.

add_filter("mce_buttons_2", "enable_more_buttons"); // add to second row
//add_filter("mce_buttons_3", "enable_more_buttons"); // add to third row

Hope you find this useful

By default, <hr> tags are pretty ugly and basic, a line at their simplest or some 3D bordered monstrosity at worst. Using the CSS background property you can specify an image, just make sure to set the height to be at least that of the image, and set the border to none.

hr {
	background:url(spiral-shape.png) no-repeat top center;
	height:42px;
	border:none !important;
}

As usual, Internet Explorer (7 and less) doesn’t play nice so you need to set up some IE specific CSS (if you care).
I always use a separate IE css file included with a condiional as follows:

<!--[if lte IE 7]>
	<link rel='stylesheet' href='ie.css' type='text/css' media='screen' />
<![endif]-->

And the IE hack as follows (Props to NeatlySliced):

hr {
	display:list-item;
	list-style:url(spiral-shape.png) inside;
	filter:alpha(opacity=0);/* gets rid of horizontal bar to right of image */
	width:0;		/* prevents tiling */
	margin-top:-10px;
}

In your admin go to:

Menu > System > Configuration > Sales > Checkout > Checkout Options

1. Set “Enable Terms and Conditions” to “Yes”
2. Click “Save Config”

Next, go to:

Menu > Sales > Terms and conditions

1. Click “Add New Condition”
2. Fill in the required fields
   • “Condition Name” is only shown in the admin so can be whatever you want.
   • Set “Status” to “Enabled”
   • Set “Show content as” to “HTML” if you want to stylize the content or have links
   • “Checkbox text” will be shown next to the checkbox, e.g. “I accept the terms and conditions”
   • “Content” will be shown in a scrolling text area above the checkbox. This could be your entire terms and conditions or a link to your terms and conditions page.
3. Click “Save Condition”

You’re all done. The terms and conditions text and checkbox will now show on the final step of the checkout. Customers will be required to check the checkbox before they can place an order.