Basecamp: Todo Templates Script

If you want an easy way to add and manage todo lists templates for your projects (if they tend to have the same type of checklists - such as website pre-launch checklists), then this script is for you. It’s a simple method of maintaining todo list templates, and adding them to any of the projects in your Basecamp account, with ease.

What you do is simply create a new project specifically for keeping your todo lists under your company in Basecamp. You then supply the script with that project id, and your Basecamp login information, and you are set to go. Simply add some todo lists and items, then navigate to the script on your server, and it is dynamically populated for you.

You can check out the details by clicking the link above in the page navigation or click the following to read more details and download the Basecamp Todo List Template script.

If you have any questions, or if you have any feature requests, please post a comment. I hope you will find it a useful tool!

Magento: Display Only If There Are Products In The Category

This is a more difficult post to title - but I think that should do it. Here was my need today: We’ve got some navigational links in the header, and there are two categories “Sale Items” and “Internet Only” that should show up as links ONLY if there are products in those categories - otherwise, they shouldn’t be there (no need to have a link to a category with no products in it).

The Solution

There’s a quick’n'easy code line that you can pass in a category id to, and it will return how many products are in that category:

Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(198)->getProductCount()

So - I got the category IDs from the admin and I created the following code to check the count - and display the link only if there are products in that category:

<?php
    $sale_count = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(198)->getProductCount();
    if ($sale_count > 0) : ?>
        <li class="sale"><a href="/sale/">Sale Items</a></li>
<?php
    endif;
    $internet_count = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(200)->getProductCount();
    if ($internet_count > 0) : ?>
        <li class="internet"><a href="/internet-only/">Internet Only</a></li>
<?php
    endif;
?>

Hopefully you can find that useful if you need it!

WordPress: Just Upgraded to 2.7 - Wow!

When I saw that WordPress 2.7 released yesterday (Dec. 11th), I didn’t really think much of it. After all - I don’t have any complaints about what WordPress is doing for me now. However, I decided to take the couple minutes to check out the video that they posted about it and I quickly realized how stupid I would be if I didn’t upgrade!

I’m still exploring all the new features and I’m still in awe at the new user interface, but it is truly amazing. Check out the video for yourself! No need for me to list all the new features - the video does a fine job:

Magento: When Launching - Turn Cache Back On!

We actually forgot to do this with one of our sites - but when developing, we obviously had cache fully disabled. When you go to launch, there are so many other things you are thinking about that it is easy to forget to enable all the cache again.

So, as a reminder to all of you that have launched Magento sites, turn back on the cache if you haven’t yet! It will definitely speed up the performance of the site.

Basecamp: New Info From 37 Signals

I was able to get in contact with a developer from 37 Signals over the weekend. I ran into some troubles finding a solid way to process the responses when you post, get, or put data to/from the Basecamp API. Turns out, the documentation is out-dated, and there are some known inconsistencies.

So - now knowing some crucial information “from the horse’s mouth”, I know now how to properly process the responses. This will be implemented in version 1.2. I’ll keep you posted!