Hello.

So to help build a resume, I'm taking on as much IT related tasks that my employer has.

I work directly with the owner of the company, and he's basically put me as the full admin for the company website.

It's built in PHP using Magento platform as it's back end.

I'm really getting good at it, but I want to customize the back end to make data entry for other employees much easier.
As well as find limitations and perform tasks as efficiently as possible.

Can anyone point me to good sources of literature or other resources I can study to really wow this guy?



A little background, I don't have access to hard code
(though I'm sure I can get it if need, I'm primary tech contact for both our ISP and web host)

Edit:
I am aware of the stack overflow site specifically for Magento.
I use it often

This post was edited by Gothmog_Lord_of_Balrogs on Oct 21 2015 07:39pm

Do you have any experiences in any other CMS platforms? I found them to be all just a little similar.

Although it's been about 5 years since I've played with anything, I must say that through my experiences with Joomla, Drupal, Cart platforms, CMSms and all the others, it was all trial and error.

As far as design went... I went to Monster Template (IDK if it still exists though I'm sure it does), and searched for a fully created website built in the CMS of my choice, and I'd make it full screen and take a screen shot. I then upload it to Photoshop and then try to recreate the whole structure element by element, box by box (Header, footer, body, text boxes, buttons) and seperate them into each of their own layers. and then copy them individually into new PSD files when I was done to save as jpegs and then dug around the CMS interface for anything that looked like HTML, PHP, or CSS and looked for stuff that said "html/www/index/page/header.jpeg/" and swapped out their stuff with my stuff. I found it easier to rename my jpeg elements I've created to what their stuff was called, but sometimes I found it better to just go in the HTML and edit that too.

Now as far as hard coding for web features, I just googled up for plug-ins and add-ons using descriptors of my objective for the site as my google search term, and sometimes I find neat little forums like this one where people relevant to the subject would post their own created add-ons and plug-ins with installation instructions. Some were easy one-click installation (Which I am assuming most of it is that way now) but a lot of times it would require the use of standard notepad++ to swap out Java and PHP tags at specified lines as instructed in the add-on's readme.txt instructions.

Sorry if this doesn't help. I am really fuzzy. I was IT heavy duty back in highschool and a little after graduation, but after the job market for shit crashed I bailed out and went into Roofing Construction. Been roofing for 6 years now, and everything I've learned is slowly fading... I went from Genius, getting picked on at school IT nerd/geek to hardcore, I love to break and fix shit with super ego construction jock. My back really regrets it, especially after falling off the roof 2 stories last winter.

I'm going to PM you my info, facebook, steam and all. I'd like to keep in touch with you about your progress as a web admin. I am currently in position to look for side work as that winter is coming and I don't think I can handle another season of winter roofing again....