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The e-commerce.

niknakgroup

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About niknakgroup

  • Birthday 07/26/1976

Profile Information

  • Real Name
    Tony Blacker
  • Location
    Ipswich, UK
  • Interests
    Jewellery, general web development, site promotion and search engine optimisation. <br /><br />PLEASE NOTE - THIS IS A LIVE STORE - look by all means, but PLEASE STOP CREATING TEST ACCOUNTS and no more ***dy TEST ORDERS. Thank you;)
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niknakgroup's Achievements

  1. OK, bear with me on this one; my explanation may be abit long winded, but hopefully it makes sense.... Right, at the minute the attribute page in the admin panel is great, provided you have a small database with few attributes. Once you get to the point of having over 500 possible attributes and 7k+ products, the page takes an absolute AGE to load, and then when you add the attributes, you can only do it one at a time. There is a bulk attribute copier contrib, which is great for those who use the same attributes all over the place on their products. Although I no longer have my jewellery site, I will use that site as the example for my problem and proposed solution: At the minute, as a pure example, I may want to add a ring to my products. This ring would have the following attributes: Metal: Yellow Gold, White Gold, Platinum, Silver, Titanium Size: H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V Gemstone: Amethyst, Topaz, Ruby, Garnet, Amber, Lapis Lazuli, Cubic Zirconia Finish: Highly Polished, Patinated, Scratched Effect, Matt Gift Options: None, Gift Wrapped, Gift Wrapped with Care Kit So, for just one product, I have 5 attribute dropdowns and a total of 35 possible options. Using the admin screen, even with quick loading (which just does not happen when your database is the size of mine - so far I have over 42,000 attributes already in), this would take best part of half an hour to add in, and with the database being the size it is, would also kill my site for any visitors who happened to be on the site at the same time! Bear in mind that using my site as the example again, each year there are going to be a fresh 1000+ products to add, and if a new suppleir is introduced, thats another 1500+ a pop. At half an hour just for the attributes, there has to be another way..... So, I personally have always used a direct to database approach using phpMyAdmin and a perverted Excel database. It works, but trying to explain this system to somebody who is new to the software, or who does not have the time to learn SQL syntax is a complete minefield, so I began thinking about possible alternatives - see what you think of this: In the admin screens, when adding a product, you currently have a couple of buttons on the right hand side which say "Add New Product" and "Add Category" (or something similar) - eithe rin here, or at the bottom of the new product page, you could add an "Attributes" button - this has the effect of already selecting the rpoduct, meaning that the attributes page does not have to load EVERY attribute for EVERY product. Advantage #1. Next, this page could be a simple list of every Attribute grouping (i.e. from example above, "Ring Size", "Metal", "Gift Option" etc. etc.), and iunder each grouping, the attributes that were relevant. Each attribute then has a radio button on the left and a text box (4 or 5 characters long would do it) to the right. When you select the radio button, you can then add the attributes price implication into the text box. When you have selected all of your required attributes and set the prices, you then click "Update" and bingo - every attribute for one product is added in one hit. Likewise, at a later date you can go back to a product, edit, add or remove attributes very easily and quickly. This would be an extremely useful contribution, and I cant see too much int he way of problems once it is set up, but my problem is this - I dont have the foggiest where to begin! Are there any geniuses out there looking for a new project? My skills are burgeoning, and I would be a very willing accomplice, but is there somebody willing to grab this mini-project and turn it from a good idea on paper (or on screen;)) into a very good and useful conttrib? Yell me or reply to this thread - also if you cant help, but like the idea, please post your thoughts. ***Watch this space....***
  2. Hi Amanda - where would i put that? in my application_top?
  3. Hi Steve - great contrib, just a quick question to see if i can save a little more bandwidth; I get around 25,000 spider page requests per day, which is perfect, as it keeps my rankings nice and high in the engines' result pages, and also shows my new content very quickly. However, I am using coolmenu on all my pages, and as I understand it, spiders dont read javascript, meaning my pages all have roughly 25kb of java code which is completely irrelevant to the spiders. Is there a way to call the user_agent into my index.php file using an if statement to not refer to my coolmenu script if a pider is detected as the browser, but instead display a default categories box. This little bit of coding could save me nearly a quarter of my bandwidth every month! From what I understand (very limited in terms of this, but here goes), something like this: <?php if $user_agent == 'ooglebot' { ?> <?php require (DIR_WS_BOXES . 'categories.php'); ?> <php }else{ ?> <?php require (DIR_WS_BOXES . 'coolmenu.php'); ?> <?php } ?> would that work? Also, is there an easy way to make it work for every spider listed in your spiders.txt file instead of listing them individually, or if not, how do I add the OR type command in? Sorry for the imbecilic questions, this is an area of php coding that is very grey to me.....any and all help very much appreciated.
  4. ok, major major problem. I tried the admin fix above, which rendered my admin buttons useless, so have reverted to the install version of gift_add.php. The only problem is I cant edit or remove my carrot items - great except that i tested the system out and now have a product set at a ridiculously low price available on my site. Please help and point me in the right direction for a functional gift_add.php file ;)
  5. Great tool, very useful - only minor glitch is this: Yahoo Position_Results The site www.niknakgroup.com is not in the top 100 for the term jewellery on Yahoo 1 http://www.niknakgroup.com 2 http://www.jewelry-jewellery.com 3 http://www.jewellery-depo.com 4 http://www.jlj-jewellery.co.uk 5 http://www.jewellerycatalogue.co.uk 6 http://www.shopsafe.co.uk Ummmm. I hate to point out the obvious, but yes I am in the top 100 - I'm first! Why has the code not picked up my url position? I panicked when I thought I had dissappeared from Google just now - calmed down soemwhat when I found I had gone up from around 40th to 17th! Like I say, just a minor glitch and one that nobody else seems to have reported...any ideas why I am getting this? Anyway, great contrib, saves me lots of clicking around! Thx.
  6. Help! I'm stuck! As Chemo isnt around to pester for help, im hoping someone else will sort me out! I have installed all as instructed, but when i go to catalog/googlesitemap/index.php I just get a blank page - no error message, just nothing. This happened to me with the old days on ultimate seo url's, all i had to do was comment out the cache('GLOBAL') line, then everything worked (to a point). I've tried doing that, still blank......?! Any ideas?
  7. hi everyone. I have just got off of instant messenger with chemo, who for as yet unexplained reasons has been banned from this forum. He cannot post any comments, nor can he even view the problems that others have posted. Obviously it is too early to pass judgement on the powers that be as to why this has happened, but Chemo wanted me to post this comment to all people looking for his valuable support and help. The comment below is his work, and if as a result of posting it I get banned, then you can make your own decisions about what that says about the state of the osc forums. Anyway, this is what he says: Sorry to everybody who would have benefitted from his expertise, and hopefully we can sort out any differences between him and the osc team to get such a valuable community member back into the osc family.
  8. hi everyone. I have just got off of instant messenger with chemo, who for as yet unexplained reasons has been banned from this forum. He cannot post any comments, nor can he even view the problems that others have posted. Obviously it is too early to pass judgement on the powers that be as to why this has happened, but Chemo wanted me to post this comment to all people looking for his valuable support and help. The comment below is his work, and if as a result of posting it I get banned, then you can make your own decisions about what that says about the state of the osc forums. Anyway, this is what he says: Sorry to everybody who would have benefitted from his expertise, and hopefully we can sort out any differences between him and the osc team to get such a valuable community member back into the osc family.
  9. OK, a question for the eggheads. This is a theoretical query, but one which I would probably have a use for, and I would imagine that as time goes by more and more people would find a use and/or a need for... Is it possible (OK, I know its possible, just not how to do it) to amend this rss feed so that it displays other elements from a site - i.e. news feeds, links directories, faq sections etc etc.? If so, how do you go about doing so? I have been reading up all night on the possibilities of rss, and apart from the little caveat that I am a little worried it could lead to yet more "affiliate" sites and websites which have NO original content of their own, I think it has real potential and will probably signal the new wave of web development. As yet I haven't managed to get my head around tweaking it within osc, so if anybody out there has already managed to contort their head into this one, please share..... :blush:
  10. Im fairly certain its in the Plesk setup, but both myself and Chemo have been through it with a fine tooth comb and found nothing that could be causing this......However, I will say that I had this working perfectly on my shared server, it is only when I got my own server running Plesk Reloaded that the problems started......Anybody else able to run this running Plesk Reloaded? I cant imagine that Brent and I are the only two with P.Reloaded who have tried to use this contrib.....I had all but given up, but maybe if its not just me, there is a solution out there somewhere!! :)
  11. quick update - just deleted my cached category_tree file and guess what.....all working!! For how long is a different matter, but anybody have any ideas why my cached files are causing all these problems??
  12. Hello. Again. <_< Guess what. 12 hours on, my site stopped working again. Returning 404 errors on all pages unless I comment out the same damn bit of code in application_top.php. Not a happy bunny, completely out of ideas. I have deleted the config_cache file, hoping that would be the simple solution. No help. I have deleted the seo_cache cached results, hoping that by re-creating them it would all work again. Still no help. I then re-uploaded each of those files in various combinations to try and get it working, still nothing. I cannot figure out why it would work perfectly then switch off and cause 404 errors. Obviously something is causing a conflict, and I can only see it is in a cached result (although rverting to the older cPath method without cached results still doesnt work - no 404 pages, but no seo urls). Chris - thanks for the extra code for config_cache - am I right in thinking this goes into application_top in the admin folder? Bobby, sorry for the false dawn, but I am one determined s.o.b and if it takes me all year I will iron out this bug. :blink: Eyes peeled for updates. Hopefully I can help somebody else avoid the same problems........ :thumbsup:
  13. :thumbsup: Wahoo!!!! For those of you who have noticed my numerous posts regarding this contribution working on my store with fantastic results, then switching itself off with disastrous results, after 3 and a bit weeks I have found the solution, and like most things, it was incredibly simple. I had installed the configuration_cache mod, which is fairly common, but of course didn't have the seo configuration group included in its tables. During my install of that mod I had omitted the self updating part, meaning that my store wasnt even attempting to pick up whether or not ultimate seo's was turned on, but when the code was in place was causing confusion for the server. I found this out kind of by accident as I had to re-upload my site to my server and forgot to create my config_cache folder. As soon as I created it (empty of course), the ultimate seo's came back to life!! Of course, I may be the only imbecile who has done this, but just incase others are finding they cannot get this contribution to work, just check to see if you have configuration_cache installed, and if you do, just delete your cached file and let the site create a new one. About 5 seconds work, but well worth it!! Thanks to all who have suggested various different possibilities, especially Chemo, and hopefully my nightmare experience will help somebody else avoid the same problem. :D
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