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ProductivePC
VP-CART New User
USA
199 Posts |
 Posted - April 26 2004 : 12:34:32
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I have someone setting up some customization in the 5.0 version of the shopping cart. We are switching on the statically generated pages. I have read the 3 statements on how the pages work and what to do in order to turn that on however it does not tell me in what format the links will be written.
My questions are as follows:
I know that we are supposed to put those links on our index page so that the SE's can index all of our product pages but I can just as easily put them on any page right?
I want to get the pages ready ahead of time so what format should I be using in the link scheme.
IE.
Our pages right now read like this
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1&cat=Unique+Baskets
What will this read like when we turn on the static URL's?
IE. Will it read
URL/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp/ID#/CategoryName
Now, currently when you click on the next button in that category we come to a page as such:
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?page=2
How will this page read.... this is for the same category as above. What is the format that I should be writing these in?
Thanks for any help
My ultimate goal is to link to every page from the sitemap and I would like to have this done prior to our programmer finishing with the customization of the 5.0 version so that we can post everything at once.
Wayne
www.WorldFamousGiftBaskets.net |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - April 26 2004 : 14:05:27
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the static html-generator will automatically create a single html index page with links to all your products in it (ie those links are done by the generator; no manual intervention required), and then as part of the generation it creates individual html pages for every single product; the links created on the index page (sitemap) automatically point to the corresponding generated html pages.
the static htmls that are generated can be put in your main vpasp directory, or anywhere else that you want (just enter the directory name on the html-execution page).
generating static htmls won't have any impact on your existing asp pages which will continue to work as normal and won't get changed by the html-generated files.
you can also have links to asp pages on your static htmls if you want (eg on headers/footers etc).
in which case, if you want to put links to some of your static-html pages on other pages (eg a hard-coded category html page), then your best bet would be to generate the html pages as normal, and then simply copy/paste the relevant code from the generated index.htm file into your other asps/html.
Simon Barnaby
Freelance Developer
Java-E UK
[email protected]
Edited by - devshb on April 26 2004 14:09:09 |
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Cam
VP-CART Super User
Australia
361 Posts |
Posted - April 26 2004 : 22:52:56
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What we have done is to change the static generator to point to the main directory and have the static pages created there.
This way we can use the normal header and trailer pages and take on any of the ASP fucntionality that exists i nthe normal VPASP pages.
This the generated page:
http://www.yourvirtualstore.net/os500/apple.asp
This is the normal page:
http://www.yourvirtualstore.net/os500/shopexd.asp?id=22
We have basically tried to ensure that everything looks as close as possible.
To display the site map style page we did the same as above so everything is able to use the same look and make maintenance simple.
http://www.yourvirtualstore.net/os500/index.asp
In the shopa_generate page you can insert an include to a standard link page to be inserted in the index page so that you do not have to recreate your manuals links each time you recreate the listing.
If you want to go further you could change the look of the links in the site map page using css so they were perhaps matched the back ground colour and display them on your home page so they cannot be seen. Not sure how search engines go with this though as they do block you if you do this using font tags.
Thanks,
Cam
*************************************
Cam Flanigan
YourVirtualStore Sales
e-mail:
http://www.vpasp.com/sales/shopcustcontact.asp
web: http://www.yourvirtualstore.net
Build you own YourVirtualStore!!!
www.yourvirtualstore.net
*************************************
Edited by - cam on April 26 2004 22:53:26 |
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ProductivePC
VP-CART New User
USA
199 Posts |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - April 27 2004 : 07:24:42
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the htmls that are generated for each product will be in the format:
p1877.htm
where 1877 is the catalogid
Simon Barnaby
Freelance Developer
Java-E UK
[email protected] |
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greatphoto
VP-CART Super User
USA
304 Posts |
Posted - April 27 2004 : 17:12:48
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Cam-
So which page does the customer normally shop: the generated static one, or the normal one? Do they arrive at one through a search engine, and another through the site home page? I assume you link to the static pages so they can be found by the search engine crawler, but would prefer for the customers not to stumble on the static pages by default. Is that correct, and if so, how do you do it? Does the static page generator also generate pages for category views, or just products?
Nathan
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ProductivePC
VP-CART New User
USA
199 Posts |
Posted - April 27 2004 : 20:50:12
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okay now there is a contradiction in answers so now I am confused
First, Simon:
So just to verify this is my url currently
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1&cat=Unique+Baskets
The number 1 id number is for the "viva italian" gift basket.
so this would be written
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/1.htm
Is this a correct statement?
This contradicts with what cam just said
quote:
This the generated page:
http://www.yourvirtualstore.net/os500/apple.asp
This is the normal page:
http://www.yourvirtualstore.net/os500/shopexd.asp?id=22
Which way is correct?
Okay, number 2:
Nathan, the static pages are genertated so that they search engines will be able to tie in and read all of the data on your shopping cart pages therefore people will by coming through the search engines on your static HTML page. This makes it a little difficult to hide it from them... lol
However; if you read the developers manual for the VPASP cart you will see there is a way that you can add to cart and not be in the cart at the time. This is a great feature and I am sure that this is the same feature that Cam and Howard are utilizing in the HTML pages. Therefore it does not matter if your visitors purchase from the HTML page or the shopping cart pages... It makes no difference as long as they get through the checkout process.....
I presume that when you click the link to add to cart you will be transferred to the checkout process as normal and the product will be added to cart. Having not used this feature I cannot say for sure but that makes sense.
Hope it helps.
Wayne
Wayne
www.WorldFamousGiftBaskets.net |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - April 28 2004 : 03:48:48
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i think some confusion has crept in here, because (and please correct me if i'm wrong anyone!), the shopdisplayproducts screen shows query results (multiple products), whereas the html pages are one page per product.
in your instance, the shopdisplayproducts page only shows one product at a time, which gives it the effect of looking like a product-details page (but with page-numbering added)
cam's not wrong; he's talking about your original posting/request.
i think the confusion is caused by the fact that you needed to mention shopexd as the corresponding asp link rather than shopdisplayproducts.
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=1
becomes:
http://www.worldfamousgiftbaskets.net/shopping/p1.htm
(where "1" is the catalogid of the product, not the categoryid)
For adding-to-cart: the previous poster was correct; we've tried this out too; even though the pages are html, you can still add items straight into your cart from them as the links to add-to-cart simply call the asp page with relevant arguments (so if you press add-to-cart on an html-generated product page, you jump seamlessly/automatically back into the standard asp site and it'll put that item into your cart). as far as a site-user's experience goes, the product-generated htmls are no different to using a shopexd.asp page; they effectively just look like mirrors.
the html-generator only creates pages per product (plus a summary index page listing all products), but vpasp v5.5 (apparently) is going to add category functions to the generator, which is cool.
if you don't want to wait for v5.5, you can tweak the generator quite easily and add an extra category argument in there or get it to group per category. I did this so that the index page orders the links by category, and then you can just copy/paste the code. a more advanced version (which i guess is what 5.5 will do) would be to create separate index pages per category.
Simon Barnaby
Freelance Developer
Java-E UK
[email protected]
Edited by - devshb on April 28 2004 03:57:51 |
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