Magento - Clean custom Account/Registration Fields

Question

I followed this tutorial to add fields in the registration form of a customer under Magento, I succeed to run the example, but I know that It is not clean, for upates later...

What' the best way to rewrite all the files used in the tutorial, in a clean way :

• app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/customer/form/register.phtml
• app/design/frontend/default/yourtheme/template/customer/form/edit.phtml
• app/code/core/Mage/Customer/Model/Entity/Setup.php
• app/code/core/Mage/Customer/etc/config.xml
• app/code/core/Mage/Customer/controllers/AccountController.php

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

You need to create your own module. Never edit files in app/code/core/ folder. If you want to add functionality to Magento, you need to rewrite the base classes.

Alan Storm has good tutorials to follow:

How to create a simple 'Hello World' module in Magento?

To rewrite a controller (AccountController in your case), and after you create you own module, you can follow this tutorial.

Configure the Layout

In your app/code/local/MyCompany/Module/etc/config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <frontend>
        <layout>
            <updates>
                <mydesign>
                    <file>myfile.xml</file>
                </mydesign>
            </updates>
        </layout>
(...)

Then you could update your layout in app/design/frontend/default/mydesign/layout/myfile.xml.