Display banners for category page is very easy in magento. This banner will be shown at the top in middle column. It’s very easy functionality provided by magento itself. You just need to know how to do this that all. Lets walk through the set of 2 quick and easy steps. Presuming that you have magento installed along with sample data/ or using default them. If in case the custom theme is installed/ configured then you may need to check the new theme file i.e. view.phtml of category page.

2 quick and easy steps:

Step 1: Create static block.
Login to the magento admin panel and click on “CMS > Static blocks” and create new static block.
Just remember the name of static block here

Step 2: Assign static block to the category.
Once the step 1 is complete go to the “Catalog > Manage Categories”. Select/ Click the category from left menu. It will reload the right hand panel data. Select “Display Settings” tab from right hand panel.
Now change
I) “Display Mode” drop down value “product only” to “static block and prodcut”.
II) Now select the cms block from drop down list of “CMS Block” field and click on save category button.

Now go to front-end and select the category page for whom you have just set the cms block. It will show you banner at the top of product list.

Google Analytics is a free Google service which allows the webmasters and web site administrators to monitor their web sites’ traffic and conversion ratio.

Magento supports two types of tracking:

1-Page View Tracking: Lists the origin from which your web store visitors linked to your store.

2-E-commerce Tracking: Lists the customers that make purchases and what they buy.

First you need to sign up at http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html. You will receive a Google Analytics account number. Write it down since you will need it for the Magento configuration.

Then configure the Google Analytics tracking in Magento. Open the Magento Admin area and navigate to System->Configuration->Sales->Google API.

Pick the Yes option from the Enable drop-down menu. Enter the Google Analytics account number in the Account number field. Click on the Save Config button.

That’s all.

Enjoy!!

The private SSL certificate is an important upgrade to your website. The basic function of an SSL is to encrypt all communication between the browser and the server, ensuring that all data goes through a secure (HTTPS) connection. An SSL certificate is a necessity when you want to operate an online shop and process the sensitive customers data through your software. It helps you gain your clients’ trust and increase your web site’s search engines rank.

The certificate could be easily enabled through the Magento Admin area -> System -> Configuration -> Web.
There you can define the insecure (non-SSL) and secure (SSL) URLs

In the Base URL fields you should enter the unsecure (regular) web site URL and the web site URL for the SSL connections. You can leave the other values unchanged, as they will be set automatically by the script after you enter the Base URL. Basically the other fields define the URLs of the main Magento store page and the URLs of the skin, media and JavaScript folders. The drop-down menus allow you to enable and disable the SSL support for the web site’s frontend and backend.

Get Magento URL paths of skin, Media, JS, Base and Store URL in CMS pages. There are different ways to retrieve mentioned URL paths depending on where section you’re editing.

To Retrieve URL path in STATIC BLOCK

To get SKIN URL
{{skin url=’images/sampleimage.jpg ‘}}

To get Media URL
{{media url=’/sampleimage.jpg’}}

To get Store URL
{{store url=’mypage.html’}}

To get Base URL
{{base url=’yourstore/mypage.html’}}

To Retrieve URL path in PHTML
Note: In editing PHTML don’t forget to enclode the following code with PHP tag

Not secure Skin URL
<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl(‘images/sampleimage.jpg’) ?>

Secure Skin URL
<?php echo $this->getSkinUrl(‘images/ sampleimage.gif’, array(‘_secure’=>true)) ?>

Get Current URL
$current_url = Mage::helper(‘core/url’)->getCurrentUrl();

Get Home URL
$home_url = Mage::helper(‘core/url’)->getHomeUrl();

Get Magento Media URL
Mage::getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_LINK);
Mage::getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_MEDIA);

Get Magento Skin URL
Mage::getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_SKIN);

Get Magento Store URL
Mage::getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_WEB);

Get Magento Js URL
Mage::getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_JS);