The Coding Pad

Simple Ecommerce with MODx Evolution and PayPal

June 16th, 2010 · MODx, Tutorials · 12 Comments

In this post, I am going to briefly walk through the process of creating a very simple and basic ecommerce setup using MODx Evolution and PayPal. There are several MODx shopping carts that are at different stages of development and that have different features, however I haven’t extensively tested or used any of them, but I hope to eventually do some writeups on them if I get the opportunity to play with them. I would recommend that you definitely explore them too, as well as other third party services that integrate with MODx, such as Ecwid and Foxycart. For this tutorial we’re going to do something very simple, basic, and direct with PayPal being the only payment gateway offered. This tutorial is by no means exhaustive or comprehensive, but it should give a good starting point for thinking about how to integrate PayPal with your MODx website for simple sales.

Opening .uif files on a Mac

May 30th, 2010 · Misc., Useful Links and Resources · 6 Comments

I recently acquired a used macbook and have been trying to acclimate myself to it. So far so good, but it’s taking some getting used to, especially on the software side of things. I guess I have been spoiled by the seemingly limitless availability of programs for PCs, and especially free/open source programs. I was digging through one of my external hard drives for a disc image that I had downloaded some weeks ago and now wanted to burn onto a disc. I realized that all I had was the .uif image, not the standard ISO. I didn’t want to wait till I got home to use MagicISO on my PC so I decided to see if I could find something for the mac.

One tool for the job is uif2iso for mac – http://vafer.org/projects/uif2iso4mac/. It’s free (please make sure to give a donation), it’s small, and it works like a charm. There’s no installation process involved, simply download and unpack the archive, open the uif2iso app file, and drag our uif image onto the uif2iso icon to mount it, and it converts it to standard ISO image which mounts perfectly on your mac.

You can then burn the resulting ISO disk image using the inbuilt Disk Utility program.

Easy and sweet.

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Free Books – iPhone, PHP, HTML/CSS, Gimp

May 5th, 2010 · Giveaways · 10 Comments

I will start with a small disclaimer – most of these are used books. They’re in great condition, but they’re not brand new (except for the iPhone book). I’m in the process of clearing my shelves and decided that instead of dropping these off at the closest goodwill store or selling them on Amazon or eBay I should instead give them away here to my readers.

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Head First iPhone Development – Book Review

May 1st, 2010 · Book Reviews · No Comments

I have recently been reading and working through the excellent O’Reilly book Head First iPhone Development. iPhone apps have proven to be a big hit, with apps for everything you can think of! It’s getting even more interesting now with the iPad. I know this is a bit of deviation from my usual posts and topics, but if you have any interest in iPhone development and have been thinking about getting into it, you will want to read this post to the end

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Updates – Relocating, MODxPO, and more

April 20th, 2010 · Blog News · 5 Comments

Hey all, just a quick little post. It’s been a while since I posted on the Coding Pad. Things have been hectic on my end, but all is good. Some developments:

On the web development/project end of things: I’ve been working on some projects and recently launched a couple of new client sites, with others in the works. You can see my recent work on my portfolio.

On the personal front: I will soon be relocating to New Zealand. This has had me completely tied up and is one of the main reasons I have not had the time to post on here. So if any of you are in New Zealand, drop me a line and let me know. I am looking forward to meeting and becoming part of the dev community there.

Looking ahead: As far as the Coding Pad goes, I have some things planned for the upcoming weeks. First will be a book giveaway coming soon. I’ve been clearing my shelves in preparation for the move and have some coding related books in pretty good shape that I’m willing to part with to my readers, so keep an eye out for the post soon.

I also have some more tutorials planned, MODx, Drupal, and more. I’ve learned a lot working on projects recently and I’m looking forward to sharing. As soon as things calm down I will be posting more tutorials and such here.

MODxPO: The very first MODx conference, is coming soon to Dallas, TX (http://modxpo.modxcms.com/) If you love MODx and want to meet the team and learn more, plan to be there. The tickets are reasonably priced and it promises to be one heck of an event. So don’t miss it! I am still not sure I will be able to go though, I already have plans for that week that I made before I knew I would be able to afford the conference ticket But I will do my best to change my plans if I can and be there.