$query = “SELECT table_rows FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = ‘database_name_goes_here’”;

$result = Mage::getSingleton(‘core/resource’) ->getConnection(‘core_read’)->fetchAll($query);
$total = 0;

for( $i = 0; $i {
$total += $result[$i]['table_rows'];

}
echo ‘Grand Total = ‘ . $total;

http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/magento-for-dev-part-3-magento-controller-dispatch

Good tutorial

If your on the checkout/cart page, you can get the shipping totals:
$shipping_total = $this->getQuote()->getShippingAddress()->getShippingAmount();

$customer = Mage::getModel(‘customer/customer’);
$customer->setWebsiteId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getWebsiteId());
$customer->loadByEmail($email);

To fix your Magneto log: Mage::log() that is not logging you need to change the update the permissions for the magento var folder.

$ cd magento/location/on/server ( hit enter )

$ chmod -R 777 var/ ( hit enter )

That will prevent Magento from trying to use a default setting: /var/tmp//magento/var

Took me 2 hours, but hopefully this saves someone else from the same pain I had.

$currentUrl = $this->helper(‘core/url’)->getCurrentUrl();

// Gives the base url of your magento installation
$baseUrl = Mage::getBaseUrl();

// Gives the url of media directory inside your magento installation
$mediaUrl = Mage::getBaseUrl(‘media’);

Magento has a built in feature to write to a log file.

In your code, you can use Mage::log(”).  In the quotes, you can put in anything you want, in my example, i am adding some text and then the dynamic customer email address.

Mage::log(‘Email sent to ‘ . $customer_email);

This should end up in the /var/log/system.log

Viewing that file, via command line, you can use:

$ tail /var/log/system.log and that will show you the last 10 results.

Make sure you remove this at some point or that log file will continue to grow and grow

How to tell if your on the home page in magento or not
if($this->getIsHomePage()) {
 echo 'You are in Homepage!';
} else {
 echo 'You are NOT in Homepage!';
}

Or you can try this:

$routeName = Mage::app()->getRequest()->getRouteName();
$identifier = Mage::getSingleton('cms/page')->getIdentifier();
if($routeName == 'cms' && $identifier == 'home') {
echo 'You are in Homepage!';
} else {
echo 'You are NOT in Homepage!';
}