I’ve also released a major upgrade to Topic Prefixes, which has been rebranded as Advanced Tags & Prefixes. In addition to all its old prefix features, this 3.2-compatible application includes several useful tools for working with tags, and is completely integrated into IP.Board’s own new tag and prefix system. Advanced Tags & Prefixes is on sale by 10% until August 1st, reducing it to only $13.50 USD.

In case there was any confusion on the matter, however, be very very careful whenever modifying the SSH configuration, or in fact touching any service or daemon you happen to be using to do the touching. If that service goes down, you’ve suddenly got a broken server and no easy way to fix it.

Been there, done that.

Multi-mod On Reply allows forum moderators to apply multi-moderation actions to a topic while replying, in addition to the default open/close/pin options provided. If you have Topic Prefixes installed, it also supports prefix multi-mods, such that you can change a topic’s prefix without any additional clicks. This hook is currently available free of cost.

By default, IP.Board allows administrators to delete their own admin logs without leaving a trace. Admin Log Deletion Logs remedies that by adding a ‘log deletion’ log, recording the user, time and IP, along with whose logs they cleared. This hook is available free of cost.

True Stats modifies IP.Board to include deleted posts and members in the board statistics numbers, rather than counting currently active posts and members. If you regularly prune old topics or users, that will no longer affect the board statistics displayed on the main page. This hook is also available free of cost.

All three modifications are available through the IPS Marketplace, and require the latest version of IP.Board, 3.1.4.

Enjoy.

Topic Prefixes
Thoreau
Thoreau Dark

Fact is, Magento can and probably will be overwhelming on your first time digging through the code, especially if you’re not familiar with the Zend Framework. But then, it does have more than 9,300 files before it’s even installed…

Almost everything you will need to deal with, whether you’re a designer or a developer, is in the /app folder.

/app/etc contains Magento’s basic configuration.

/app/code contains all of Magento’s code, split up by source [community, core or local], publisher, and module. All of the core Magento code is in /app/code/core/Mage. If you ever plan on upgrading, you probably shouldn’t change anything in that folder. If you install a Magento Connect extension, you’ll find the code for it in /app/code/community.

Within each module there are a bunch more subfolders: Block, controllers, etc, Helper, Model, and sql. If you plan on creating your own module you’ll need to understand this better, and there are guides for that; for now, it’s probably enough to know that most of the actual code can be found in the Block folder.

All these underscores… what do they mean? If you’ve glanced at any of the actual code, you might’ve noticed that class names seem like long, repetitive nonsense. In fact, the class name tells you exactly where you can find it. “Mage_Catalog_Block_Navigation” is in the Mage folder, in the Catalog module, it’s a block, and it’s called Navigation. So, you’ll find it at /app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/navigation.php. It works the same way for any other publisher, module, type and class. If the class name has more than four parts, such as “Mage_Catalog_Model_Category_Api_V2″, look for subfolders with those names. That class is at /app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Model/Category/Api/V2.php.

/app/design contains all of Magento’s templates, split up by frontend/backend, then by base/default, then by theme name and finally by module [mostly corresponding to each of the modules within the code section, above]. If you are working on a new site, one of the first things you’ll want to do is copy the modules you’re working on from /app/design/frontend/base/default into /app/design/frontend/default/default so that you can change the templates without worrying about upgrades.

Within each theme folder there are as many as four subfolders: etc, layout, locale, and template.

• etc contains basic config files for the theme.
• layout contains configuration files for each module, which you can use to include blocks and other templates, and in some cases do a whole lot more.
• locale contains language files, allowing you to translate pages [or change words] without touching the actual templates.
• template contains the actual HTML for each module, split up into a number of .phtml files.

Looking for the page wrapper? That’s in /app/design/frontend/*/*/template/page. Inner-page templates are there; the header, footer and other includes are in the html subfolder.

If you’re going to change any styles, there’s one more place that will interest you…

/skin contains all CSS, Javascript and image files. The folder structure is exactly like /app/design–follow the folder tree until you get to the files for your skin.

There are three more things you should know before you dig in.

First, Magento’s caches are all enabled by default. I don’t know how many hours I’ve burnt trying to figure out why the heck changes I made weren’t doing what they should… just to realize that it was being cached. You can [and should] disable these while you’re working on the site in Admin > System > Cache Management. Select all, actions -> disable, submit.

Second, there’s an invaluable free extension called the Developer Toolbar. It adds a toolbar to the bottom of the site with a number of handy links that control various settings in Magento. One in particular is incredibly useful: enabling “Frontend Hints” shows you exactly where in the code and in the templates that every single part of the page is coming from. Don’t try to search for where something on the page is coming from–enable the frontend hints and you should be able to figure it out within ten seconds.

Third, everything in Magento will inherit. For templates, Magento will look for a template file within your specific theme. If that doesn’t exist, it’ll try to load it from the default theme; if that doesn’t exist, it’ll fall back to the base skin. The same thing applies to config, layout and locale files. Similarly with classes: You can overload any core class through the community or local folders.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started. I’m not a Magento genius, but if something is unclear, or if you have a specific question, I’d be glad to try helping.

As usual, if anything has gone amiss, please let me know.

If you’re not familiar with topic prefixes, the general idea is that an admin has some way of defining prefixes that can be used in a given forum. Users can pick which of those prefixes applies to their topic, and that prefix is then displayed on the topic list along with the title. There are some people who also want it to go farther: You need to be able to filter topics based on the prefix. You need to be able to search with them. You need to be able to require users to select a prefix in certain forums [and not in others!].

Topic Prefixes, for IP.Board 3.1, does all of that for the low cost of $15 USD. Check it out on the products page: IP.Board Modifications

Beside fixing all known bugs and making some minor style improvements, the update also includes the customizing tool we introduced in the last version of Graphite, allowing each user to change the skin to their individual preferences.

Thoreau and Thoreau: Dark can be purchased for $15 apiece, or $20 together.

The new version of the skin includes an innovative customization tool, which allows every user to change the skin’s font and color to their own preferences.

You can download the latest version of Graphite from the official Resources site.

The skins are compatible with IP.Board 3.0, and current as of version 3.0.1. They do not include support for IP.Blogs, IP.Gallery or IP.Downloads.

For more information, please see the products page.