ZIP FILE: pull_featured_product_data.zip

The plugin/patch code is referred to as multimagefp. The zip file below includes an auto-installing php script and instructions on how to manually install multimagefp if the script fails.

Disclaimer: You are free to use the code however you like for any purpose. This code is provided as is, without any warranty or guarantee of any kind. Use it at your own risk. This code was written for Zen Cart v1.3.9b on a Linux server with PHP4/PHP5 in mid 2010.

EDIT: It appears that the auto-install file is currently broken. For right now, you should NOT use the auto-install but should instead manually copy and paste the code segments. See the readme in the zip file for instructions on how to do this.

ZIP FILE: multimagefp.zip

Quite a few times I have wanted to quickly sketch-up a site design using complex rounded corner boxes but didn’t have time to grab illustrator and do all the path finder operations necessary. So I discovered this nifty little trick that may save you some time the next time the need arises.

First, this is the look that we will achieve:

This is the end result with rounded complex corners everywhere

First create a new document in photoshop, I used 1000 x 650 pixel dimensions. Create the general shape that you would like to be rounded with the marquee tool. Here is an example of what I created using the marquee tool:

My initial selection in photoshop

I used the shift button to add to selection and the option (alt) button to remove from selection.

Now enter quick mask mode by typing the q key or clicking the quick mask mode button:

Now your document should look something like this (unless you have chosen another color for quick mask):

Go to filters>>blur>>gaussian blur enter the amount your prefer. The more blur the more the corners will be rounded. I used 9.7

Now the fun part! Open up the levels tool by going to image>>adjustments>>levels or command-l on the mac and drag the highlight and shadow handles to the mid-tone handle. Essentially just dragging them together. You can also move the mid-tone handle left or right before dragging the highlight and shadow handles to the mid-tone handle to “open-up” or “shrink-down” the size of your boxes.

Here is the result with all the handles drug close to the left:

Here is the exact same selection with all the handles drug closer to the right.

Now, after applying the levels of your choice, exit quick mask mode by clicking the quick mask button again or by just typing the q key. You will now have a rounded selection of the square one you created! Fill with your color of choice and voila! Complex rounded corners!

1. It is able to back up large amounts of data over FTP without dieing out or losing files.
2. It only downloads new files or files that have changed. It does not re-download files that it already has.
3. It creates directories that are easy to browse and restore from. The directories contain a complete mirror of a site at a single point in time (eg. One directory would contain a complete copy of the site at 2:00am on August 8, 2009).
4. The script does not use an unreasonable amount of hard drive space to store the sites. Even though each directory contains a complete copy of a site, it uses hardlinks for unchanged files. This means that if a site hasn’t changed over a 10 day period or has only changed a little, then the combined size of the 10 directories, each holding a daily backup of the site, will only be a little bigger than a single copy of the site.

The script was written for and only tested on Mac OS X 1.5.x, but it should work on any *nix system. If you are going to use it on an OS other than OS X, then you might want to consider changing the “cpio -dpl” command to “cp -al”. The reason cpio was used in this script rather than cp is because Mac OS X’s cp command lacks the -al options.
Also, as a note, the script uses lftp to back up the data over FTP and mysqldump to back up mySQL databases. Originally, it was going to use curlftpfs and rsync to back up the files over FTP, but we never got this working successfully. Any time a large number of files were to be copied, most of the files would return errors and fail to copy. Thus, lftp was used instead.

The bash script.
An example cron file.

An Example SWF.
The FLA.