The standard magento way to sync orders placed, to external systems, is to use the 'sales_order_place_after' event. (This is even a question in the magento certification exam)

I have a problem with this: latency at checkout!

Using this (presecibed) method to sync your orders, you can add at least 3+ seconds (and as long as xx seconds) to the checkout process. That is unwanted lag, and delay for your customers, just to se their success page display.

One of the most time consuming, and frustrating tasks (purely becuase it is so mundane) is for a developer is to export external system databases, and re-import them for debug work.

In magento land, you need to alter a lot of database config values to make the imported database run in your dev environment.

This article describes a snaphot tool I created to allow quick, easy import and export of external magento databases into my development environment.

I firmly believe that you should try not to use the magento admin to make configuration adjustments.

The main mindset behind this is to prevent changes made in a development environment, not to go live with your deployment of code. 
It can be quite embarresing when your new super duper module works incorrectly on live, just because you forgot to configure live the same as your dev system.
A simple yes/no config change forgotten can make the world of difference on a new feature

In this blog post I will demonstrate how to use the Free Gift Promotions Extention sold in our online store to effect issueing your customers with a coupon code when they sign up to your store newsletter.

This example will generate a coupon in the Gift Promotions module 'on the fly' and issue that to your customer via email after they have signed up to the newsletter.

This is just one small example how you can use the Gift promotions extension to boos activity n your site - Everyone loves a free gift!

Recently I became aware that my Dynamic Catgeory Products module is being pirated by a company called CMSmart.net. They seem to be based in VietNam, but their site was hosted in the USA.

The site that I am working on had a requirement to list 5 of the Best Seller products inside a CMS page.

Magento can out-the-box inject category lists into CMS pages, but there is no built-in-way to limit the product count.

This article describes how I did this, with only using an observer / event, using the core Product List functionality. Thus no new blocks, no new templates.  

Recently I noticed a long(ish) SQL query happening during checkout
The same calculation could be seen in the cart.

On the site, the SQL could take up to 2ms to process, thus adding unwanted delay to the end user experience

My investigations reveal a potential bug in how magento deals with quotes where no address has yet been selected.

From version 4.1.0 of the Dynamic Categories Module, it is possible to build rules in progresseive steps of results. 

You can insert a new SUB RESULT combiner, which will use the result from the preceding rule sets to limit the results of the linked rule set.

Using SUB RESULTS, you can build a category by combining the results of multiple rule sets, progressively to one result. 

Sounds confusing? It is really very simple, and an example will explain it best. 

It is now possible to use dynamic variables in rules as values.

Sometimes you need to render a line item in the cart differently than the rest.  

A sample usage case would be to prevent the quanity of a cart item to be changed.

A built in feature of the cart rendering, is the ability to render each product type with a different template. 
You can define the template via layout xml, using the "addItemRender" action within the 'checkout.cart' block

However, it is impractical to go an create a whole new product type. This article show another, very very easy way