I recently grabbed the open-source e-commerce platform Magento so I could begin delving into the code and setting up a development environment to begin building BrusselieBabies.

After my exploration was complete it was time to upload the package and configure an environment on my hosted solution. Of course being slightly lazy I went ahead and just used ftp and dragged the unpackaged folder into the corresponding web location.

When the upload had completed I began the installation process. Unfortunately the install page threw:

Fatal error: Call to a member function append() on a non-object in /app/code/core/Mage/Install/controllers/WizardController.php on line 72

My attempts to google the error message returned terrible results filled with servers actually throwing the error or German forums with the error in question and no answer provided.

Finally while digging around I saw someone mention files may be missing from package, as a result I uploaded the archive instead. SSH’d into my solution and unpackaged it. Build ran fine.

Lesson learned: just use the package archive and go through the extra step of having to unpackage it on the server. Otherwise you could end up wasting time trying to troubleshoot a non-existent issue.