Alan Storm has an interesting article up about a way to check configuration files in Magento. One of the consistently painful things to do in Magento is change configuration parameters. Alan’s solution is a new Magento module: Config Lint. In the great spirit of Lint programs, Config Lint runs through your configuration code and finds lines that are likely to be wrong. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s spent hours trying to debug configuration issues in Magento, so this sounds like a great idea.

Go check it out over at Alan Storm’s Blog.

To kick off the Mastering Magento blog, I want to explain a little more about this project and what to expect in the coming months. Magento is a great eCommerce system, but it has a reputation for being complex and difficult to use. Sometimes that reputation is warranted. While Varien and the Magento community have done a lot to make the system more approachable, the average user still has a lot of trouble starting out. The same goes for developers, who may fight for seemingly endless hours to get things done in Magento. So, to make life a little bit easier for everyone involved, I will be rounding up some of the most valuable information from around the Magento community and providing you with the tools you need to make the best use of the fastest growing eCommerce system in the world. Think of it as Magento for mere mortals.