Magento provides RSS feed for low inventory alerts. Lets us discuss how to subscribe to the feed.

First we need to set up the inventory level of a product at which it will be considered as low stock.

1. Login to admin and navigate to System >> Configuration
2. Scroll down to the Catalog tab and click the Inventory section to open it. Now expand the ‘Product Stock Options’ section.
3. Set Manage Stock as ‘Yes’ and add a value for ‘Notify for Quantity Below’, save the configuration. Note that you do not set ‘Notify for Quantity Below’ as 0 as it disables the RSS feed.

In Magento you can create CMS static block from Admin by following the path: Admin >> CMS >> Static Blocks.

Lets see how we can display them on the frontend.

1. Using Layout updates

You can add layout updates in local.xml file for a page as shown below:

<reference name="right">
     <block type="cms/block" name="your_block_name" before="-">
         <action method="setBlockId">
             <block_id>your_block_identifier</block_id>
         </action>
     </block>
</reference>

You can enter these layout updates in Magento admin also – Categories, Products, CMS Pages provide a field for “Custom Layout Update”.

In one of my project we had a two level category hierarchy. Clicking on the top level category displayed a promotional banner and the sub-categories. The second level category page displayed the products. In this post we will discuss how we can display the subcategories on a category page. We are not going to create any new module.

STEP 1: Create a PHTML file

First we create a phtml file {{MAGENTO_ROOT}}\app\design\frontend\rwd\mytheme\template\catalog\category\subcategories.phtml

In order to optimize the performance of Magento websites it is recommended that you include only the relevant JS Or CSS files on a page. Generally all Magento websites have a slider on home page, so it is good idea to include the slider JS and CSS files only on the home page if none of the other web pages implement a slider.

In Magento you can build a multilingual as well as a multi-currency website. In order to facilitate a multi-currency website, Magento asks you to setup [Admin >> System >> Configuration >> General >> Currency Setup] a ‘base currency’, a ‘default display currency’ and ‘allowed currencies’. The ‘base currency’ can be configured at global level or website level depending on your catalog settings at Admin >> System >> Configuration >> Catalog >> Catalog >> Price >> Catalog Price Scope while ‘default display currency’ and ‘allowed currencies’ can be configured at store view level.

Magento provides a configuration option to help you show a demo store notice when your web store is not yet live and you are just running a demo store.

To enable/disable the demo store notice:

• Log into the Magento Admin
• Navigate to System >> Configuration
• Select the Design Section

In Magento you can change the default sorting attribute for product listing page from Magento admin.

To set the sorting attribute login to Magento admin and follow the following steps:

1. Go to Admin >> System >> Configuration >> Catalog
2. Expand the “Frontend” Section
3. Make selection from the “Product Listing Sort by” dropdown
4. Click the “Save Config” button.

In order to promote certain products, you may want to place them at the top in the category product listing page. Lets see how to set/change the position of the products from Magento admin.

To set/change the position of the products proceed as below:

1. Login Magento admin and follow the path Admin >> Catalog >> Manage Categories.
2. Click on a category in the category tree to display the category related information.

At times we need to add new configurations options or modify some option in an existing module, lets see how to do it in this article. Suppose we have to add a new field “Surcharge” to the Payment Method “Cash on Delivery” configuration options and modify the “Instructions” option label to “Message”.

To do this we have to create a new module.

1. We create a file “Techawaken_Cod.xml” in folder app\etc\modules\ to declare the module. The content of the file is shown below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<Techawaken_Cod>
<active>true</active>
<codePool>local</codePool>
<depends>
<Mage_Payment />
</depends>
</Techawaken_Cod>
</modules>
</config>

Its very easy and simple to change the logo image in Magento. In default Magento theme logo image is picked up from the {{Magento_Root}}/skin/frontend/default/default/images/logo.gif.

One option is to create gif image of you logo and name it logo.gif and upload it in the {{Magento_Root}}/skin/frontend/default/default/images/ folder to overwrite the old logo image file.