Adding order comments to the checkout process in your Magento store is quite useful. This functionality can be used to allow customers to provide specific instructions for their order or to collect information from them, for example, asking customers how they heard about your company, which can yield valuable data and marketing ideas.

This guide will detail how to install the Magemaven OrderComments extension as well as configure it for specific purposes.

1) The first step is to install the OrderComments extension via Magento connect. Go to the extension’s listing in the Magento Marketplace and click the install button. Once you have the extension key, open your Magento Connect Manager via the admin panel (System > Magento Connect > Magento Connect Manager) and install the extension.

Typically, this extension works out of the box, but with some custom themes that don’t support all of Magento’s features it is sometimes necessary to update your layout file(s). To do this, locate checkout.xml under app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/layout. Open the file and look for the block type checkout/onepage_review_info. Ensure that it contains the following code near the end:

<block type="checkout/agreements" name="checkout.onepage.agreements" as="agreements" template="checkout/onepage/agreements.phtml"/>

If you don’t see it the above code in your layout file, please add it just before the block named checkout.onepage.review.button. Once added, the extension will work with your custom theme.

Customers will now be provided with a text box labled “Order Comment” into which they can enter their comments. To see order comments in the Magento admin, go to Sales > Orders. Order comments will be listed in the far right column.

2) If you would like to change the default “Order Comment” label on the text box to read differently, such as changing it to “How did you hear about us?”, open app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/template/ordercomment/checkout/ and edit the agreements.phtml. Around line 21, locate the following code:

<label for="ordercomment-comment"><?php echo Mage::helper('ordercomment')->__('Order Comment') ?></label>

Change 'Order Comment' to 'How did you hear about us?' (or whatever else you would like to label the box) and save the file.

Voila, now you have a custom order comment box for your customers. We hope you found this tutorial helpful.