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Justin
VP-CART New User

87 Posts

Posted - October 21 2005 :  19:46:13  Show Profile  Visit Justin's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi Guys -

In your opinion, what is the best way to remove a product range from your website? Should I be deleting the rows from the database? Or is there a paramter in the database that I can change for each item?

Also, how does this affect search engine listings? I assume the pages don't get removed completely from Google etc if you don't delete the actual pages.

Finally, what are all the other things I need to remember to do eg remove the category from the database, etc.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Justin


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http://www.mjhealthandbeauty.com.au

Justin
VP-CART New User

87 Posts

Posted - October 22 2005 :  08:50:07  Show Profile  Visit Justin's Homepage  Reply with Quote
*********** UPDATE

Ok, when I change the "Hide" flag to True, people who come in via Google can still find the hidden products and order them.

When I delete a row from the database, it gives this "Cannot read xxxxxx" error message, where xxxxx is the product id.

Is there a better solution?

JL

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http://www.mjhealthandbeauty.com.au
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dcwebman
VP-CART New User

USA
127 Posts

Posted - October 24 2005 :  07:50:24  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm concerned about being able to order hidden products. One site I have the client sometimes has products in stock or not and when not, they're hidden.

What kind of URL is being shown in Google that will bring up the page to let people order that hidden product? I would think if it's the external description page and that if the stock count was correct and being used, that ordering would not be possible.
Jeff

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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - October 24 2005 :  13:30:13  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I think it's shopexd.asp. You'd have to change shopexd.asp to redirect to a "product no longer available" error/page when it's hidden.

The hide flag is used on product summary pages (shopdisplayproducts.asp) so you won't get invalid/hidden links on your site, but people can still use the shopexd.asp?id=xxxx link for hidden products. So, if a search engine has an old page in it then people will still be able to view it.

Try something like this (this bit is in shopexd.asp, near the top)....

change this from:

ShopOpendatabaseP dbc
setupdynamicproduct dbc, catalogid
OpenRecordSet tmpRS
GetTemplate
If Template="" then
Serror=getlang("LangExdNoTemplate")
HandleError
end if
ShopTemplateWrite template, tmpRS, rc
tmpRS.close
set tmpRS=nothing
Shopclosedatabase dbc


to:

ShopOpendatabaseP dbc
setupdynamicproduct dbc, catalogid
OpenRecordSet tmpRS
' Start of change to stop hidden products:
Dim thide
thide=tmpRS("hide")
if (thide=1) then
Serror=getlang("LangNoCatalogId")
HandleError
end if
' End of change to stop hidden products
GetTemplate
If Template="" then
Serror=getlang("LangExdNoTemplate")
HandleError
end if
ShopTemplateWrite template, tmpRS, rc
tmpRS.close
set tmpRS=nothing
Shopclosedatabase dbc

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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Justin
VP-CART New User

87 Posts

Posted - October 24 2005 :  18:49:33  Show Profile  Visit Justin's Homepage  Reply with Quote
quote:
What kind of URL is being shown in Google that will bring up the page to let people order that hidden product? I would think if it's the external description page and that if the stock count was correct and being used, that ordering would not be possible.


Hi Jeff - I don't actually use the stock count feature, so I can't comment on this. I'd assume in that case ordering wouldn't be possible.

quote:
The hide flag is used on product summary pages (shopdisplayproducts.asp) so you won't get invalid/hidden links on your site, but people can still use the shopexd.asp?id=xxxx link for hidden products.


This is exactly the problem I was talking about. Thanks so much for the code - I'll try it out and let you know how it goes. Since I don't use the Hide flag for any other purpose I might also include a line which tells google that the page is no longer available.

Thanks again!

Justin

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http://www.mjhealthandbeauty.com.au
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dcwebman
VP-CART New User

USA
127 Posts

Posted - October 26 2005 :  06:37:47  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm still trying to get my client to effectively use the stock count feature but I do have it enabled and it would solve this problem. I know I have come across other issues related to Hiding a product that I had to fix, e.g. generating static html files without hidden products, top ten display, etc.

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Justin
VP-CART New User

87 Posts

Posted - October 30 2005 :  08:43:26  Show Profile  Visit Justin's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I tried the code but I couldn't get it to work. I think it might be because I'm using an older version of Vpasp (4.0)

I'll have another look tomorrow.

Justin

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