Diagnostic print_r statements and logging might be quick and easy tools for investigating what Magento is doing, but a full debugger offers a lot more power and flexibility. This post demonstrates how to set up the xdebug debugger for use with the vim editor.
Debugging Magento with Xdebug
Magento debugging - loading blocks, layouts and config files
Occasionally I've needed to take a closer look at exactly which block, layout or config file is being loaded by Magento. In this post I will demonstrate a "brute force" approach to checking exactly what is being processed.
