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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
 Posted - March 11 2006 : 09:21:14
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We've just released a new addon for VP-ASP sites, which I'm really hoping vpasp users will find fantastically useful to help improve their search engine rankings.
It's a google-sitemap generator - details about it are here:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=118
This has only just been released; if anyone out there buys it and wants tweaks/enhancements, then please let us know; we'd like to actively maintain it and send out updates of it to people on a fairly regular basis; we'd like it to evolve with feedback from people who use it in the real world.
Here's the info that we sent out about it to people on our mail-list...
Ever wanted an easy way to have Google index your website and ALL YOUR VP-ASP PRODUCT PAGES? You simply click a button in VP-ASP admin and this utility will build a specially formatted file for Google containing the information Google needs to index your web pages and VP-ASP product pages
DISCOUNT:
Enter the code BYZGOOGLE in to the coupon field when you check-out and we'll take £5 off the price of the Google Site Map Generator. (Good until 31 March 2006)
More detailed information on The Google SiteMap Generator can be viewed from here:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopexd.asp?id=118
if you want to sign-up to our mail-list, you can do so here:
http://www.bigyellowzone.com/shopmaillist.asp
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on March 11 2006 09:30:23 |
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rvaga
VP-CART Super User
USA
254 Posts |
Posted - March 11 2006 : 12:29:26
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Simon, a few questions. . .
In reading the google page from the link you offer in your post, google mentions requirements such as python. Is this also required for the BYZ module? (I ask because I don't know what python is/does, just wondering what potential mountains I would need to climb).
Most of my non-VPASP pages (static) are not in the cart directory. Will your new module work, or does everything need to be in the cart directory?
Am I correct in assumingy that BYZ has taken the google instructions (which look impossible, or at the least exceedingly time consuming), and streamlined these for VPASP - the end result is the same as google wants but easy to do/implement with the BYZ module? |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - March 12 2006 : 06:57:18
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At the moment, what it does is this...
it generates links for all your shopexd.asp pages
eg:
http://www.mydomain.com/shop/shopexd.asp?id=100
etc
you can specify if you only want to create links for in-stock products, or all products (or out of stock only if you want to do that for some strange reason)
you can also specify your timezone (relative to gmt), the default priority and change-frequency and last-modified date/time.
that's for your product pages, in addition to that, it also has 2 separate csv files that you can tweak/use which hold a list of any custom/static (non-vpasp) pages (such as "aboutus.htm" etc), one csv file is for the urls that you want to show above/before the product links, and the other csv file is for the urls that you want to show after/below the product links.
The csv files for the custom/static (non-vpasp) pages are just a list of pure urls (full url paths) so you can have any pages/urls you want in those; each line in the csv file is the url for the first field and the priority (optional) for the second field.
The generator then queries all the products and reads in your csv files, and then generates the google xml sitemap file with the links in the right order and in the right format.
We're on the initial release of the addon, so if anyone has any suggestions/requests for enhancements, please please please let us know and we'll add them to the generic addon and send out updates.
I've asked my boss about python, because I've got no idea what that is; I'll post again here when I find out. Whatever is it, it's not needed for the byz addon to generate the sitemap file.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on March 12 2006 07:48:32 |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - March 12 2006 : 08:02:03
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I see what python is; it's some kind of server software which looks at files etc; so the answer is....
no; you don't need python for the byz addon to work, as that's only needed if you use google's own sitemap generator rather than our addon.
so what we've done is made a vpasp-specific sitemap generator which doesn't need any 3rd-party/special server software and where you can more easily store the list of your static urls etc, and where the links are generated from your vpasp products plus your specified static urls.
The idea being that the rules for which pages are relevant will be setup on our addon (either with your config options or internally in the addon) rather than the convoluted/complex/possibly-misfitting generic google sitemap generator rules, and to generally make the generation process simpler by you being able to just login to vpasp admin and press a button.
As time goes on and we get feedback, our addon will become increasingly relevant/suited/tailored to vpasp logic/pages and the way that vpasp site owners prefer to process/record/match their list of pages that they want included in the sitemap file.
So, as per above, please do let us know if you want tweaks to it.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on March 12 2006 08:06:06 |
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fb4u
VP-CART New User
66 Posts |
Posted - March 15 2006 : 06:50:49
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Hi Simon,
regarding the non-vpasp product files, for the other static pages, is there a simple way to include * folders, *specific files beginning with certain letter(s), etc. or would one have to include each file, one by one. And will it remember this the next time one needs to generate the sitemap for Google or would we have to do it manually each time?
If it does remember what files to include, is it easy to make changes?
And can one easily EXCLUDE certain folder/files with the same following questions as above?
Thanks, Helena |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - March 15 2006 : 17:14:29
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For the non-vpasp files, you list those in csv files (ie you have one line/record per url in the csv file) - those csv files are read by the generator everytime you re-generate the pages, so your list of non-vpasp files/urls doesn't get overwritten by the generator itself.
instead, the csv files just get read by the generator, and then those urls that are mentioned in the csv files get translated into the sitemap file.
so, you can change those csv files whenever you like, adding/taking-away whichever files/urls you want; those csv files never get written-to by the generator; it's just your source list of non-vpasp files/urls.
it doesn't use wildcard characters for the non-vpasp pages, so you'd just mention each one individually in the csv files, and only those files listed in the csv files (plus your shopexd pages for the products) would end up in the generated sitemap file.
so far we're on "release 2" of the addon (the latest logic added being to encode special characters internally so that you can use urls with ampersands in them in your csv files for your non-vpasp page list)
if anyone wants any other enhancements, then do let us know; I did tinker with the idea of having wildcards allowed to find physical files on the server, but I thought that the end-result would be that it'd make the generation a bit too complex/awkward for the site-owner to work out. but we can add that kind of thing if there's a demand for it at some stage.
all ideas/thoughts/suggestions welcome!
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
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bmw000
VP-CART New User
137 Posts |
Posted - March 16 2006 : 17:17:21
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I would love to see a wildcard feature added. I wouldn't want it to just look for all wilcards of say mydomain.com\*.
I would like to submit my forum and all of the posts, so I would like a wilcard of mydomain.com\forum* and this way it would look at only the forum directory and all of it's links contained within.
Maybe have an option to go further down the tree within that folder and pick subfolders like mydomain\forum\images* and so on, or just stay in the forum directory and not go further.
I know it would take longer to process the .xml file, but the end result would probably be worth it.
I am not too familiar with the .xml and what is needed and not needed, but I was wondering if you can add other data to each url, like add the product name or product id or something. Don't know if it is possible or if google allows it, but I think that would help too.
Just my .02 cents.
Thanks,
Brian Weber
Brian Weber
Variety Solutions, LLC
http://www.varietysolutions.com |
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devshb
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1904 Posts |
Posted - March 17 2006 : 13:17:09
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cool; thanks for all the feedback/questions etc; I've added an internal task into our system to look into those aspects and to do an enhancement to the addon taking those things into account.
If anyone has any other comments/questions/suggestions, please feel free to post them here or contact us; it'd be good to get as much feedback in as we can so we can guage which potential tweaks/new-bits people'd find most useful so that we can prioritise them.
If anyone's worried along the lines of "I don't want to buy it yet if an upgrade is around the corner"....don't worry; in this instance when an upgrade is done within a few months of someone's purchase then the upgrade would be given out free.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons |
Edited by - devshb on March 17 2006 13:18:52 |
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