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Top 3 Solutions when your Magento Categories are not displaying

Here are 3 quick solutions to try if you do not see your Magento store categories after a fresh install of Magento or an upgrade to the latest version. I wanted to post this because I just recently helped install Magento for someone (one of my 5 free Magento installations) and experienced this. The installation version was the latest Magento version, 1.2.1.2 and product categories did not show up on the frontend after they were added in the administration interface.

The top 3 solutions to this in my experience are:

  1. The categories not added as sub-categories of the Default, Root category.
  2. The Magento store configuration has no default category set.
  3. The category cache requires a refresh.

I’ll cover each of these points in more detail with screenshots, so that if you are having trouble with your categories not showing up you can hopefully solve the problem.

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Google Checkout disabled – Not available with these items

I was recently asked for help on a Google Checkout problem where the Google Checkout Button on the Magento cart page was disabled with a message saying: “Not available with these items“.

I had a look at the Magento store in question and found a few clues to go on but a
Google search on the subject proved to be of little help unfortunately. The button looks like the one shown in the screenshot below:

The disabled Google Checkout button on the Magento cart/checkout screen. It looks like the normal one only greyed out.
The disabled Google Checkout button on the Magento cart/checkout screen. It looks like the normal one only greyed out.

The underlying URL for the button is:

 <img src="https://checkout.google.com/buttons/checkout.gif?merchant_id=5677186919&amp;w=180&amp;h=46&amp;style=white&amp;variant=disabled&amp;loc=en_US" alt="Fast checkout through Google" />

The big clue was the parameter on the Google Checkout button image URL on the problem store. It had variant=disabled which is generated server side, and so had to be coming from somewhere within Magento. A big fat grep over the code uncovered a variant=' string fragment in Link.php.

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5 Free Professional Magento Installations

The first 5 Magento Installations I do will be free! Whats the catch? You have to provide me a review of the work I do and my professional service in general that I can put on my blog for others to see. Simple eh?

I’ve decided to start offering Professional Magento Installations as a service, there is high demand for a well installed Magento. All too many people with not quite enough knowledge or skills are having a go at it then ending up with failed installations. I have helped a number of people on the Magento forums who for a small fee could have saved themselves hours of headaches and had the work done quickly by a professional.

My standard price will be $99, I see that Magento themselves charge $149 – so naturally I wanted to make my Magento Installation cheaper without cutting back on quality or timeliness. I will often be able to install same day, and usually install within 2 days.

Of course the price is ZERO right now for a limited time I’ll install your Magento for FREE, so if you are contemplating it, get in touch with me.

Because I haven’t offered any professional service on this blog before I thought I’d offer to do the first 5 Magento Installations free of charge to get some references from happy customers! So if you want your Magento installed for you by an expert, check out my professional services page. Be in quick, I’m sure this won’t last.