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niknakgroup

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Everything posted by niknakgroup

  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
  14. OK, probably answered my own question here, as Google have just indexed all of my popup_image pages, which is also in a javascript link, so I'm fairly ceratin that this would be fine. A little annoying, as I am now adding extra links to my popup image pages for those customers who have found my images from a Google search and at present they cant get to the rest of my site.....extra visitors though...every cloud has a silver lining I suppose. (I have also just included popup_images in my no-no list in robots.txt to stop this from happening again, bandwidth can disappear very easily if robots are going through my images.....!!) Anyway, thanks again for some excellent coding and avery easy install. I am certain this will add great value to my site, and that many other site owners will find it useful for them too.
  15. Thanks for the links; couple of quick questions: 1) Does this affect your keyword ranking on the major engines - as it is most likely going to be keywords you are using, surely this now puts these words inside javascript tags which engines ignore...?>! 2) Is there a way to get this to work on non-database code? Ideally I would like it to pick out every instance of a keyword anywhere on my site and change it to the desired popup explanation? Any ideas, or is there a way of shoving my current page code into the database only to pulll it back out again re-scripted with phpLib.....? (please bear in mind my complete ignorance, if the above question is completely dumb, sorry!)
  16. Hi Bobby. My site is getting a bit bogged down with tweaks and re-tweaks, so have set up a dummy site on a fresh install to make sure that I am not running conflicting code anywhere. On a fresh install, and with just this contrib running, it still comes up with.......standard osc urls! I have tried the original version, 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0. All come up with nothing (except the occassional blank page when using 2.0 and forgetting to change GLOBAL to a blank space). I think you were right way back when I first raised the issue (or was it Chris?) in saying that this is a server setup issue. I have wiped my server and reconfigured it, but still getting no joy. Which part of the httpd.conf refers to the part of your code where GLOBAL is defined? I am fairly certain that this is where my gremlin lies, but I dont have the knowledge (yet) to go and nuke the little bugger! As always, your continued help is greatly appreciated, and in reference to the earlier post regarding female sex organs and shower bags (still not quite sure how calling someone a douche bag is an insult, but maybe thats just me being naiive and/or english...?), some people dont know a good thing when they have it. After all, osC is free, the support forums are free, the contribs are free. When a coder asks for a fee to look at a specific problem, this is surely a very small price to pay for what is probably the most powerful shopping cart software available (at any price). Just my 2 cents, and probably not suitable or relevant to this particular thread, but what the hell - someone else started slinging mud, I feel obliged to get the mop out. ;)
  17. Call me thick if you like, I have looked at the 2 sites I managed to find links for from this thread, but I cant see what this contrib does!! i found it from a mention in another post by Chemo about trying to integrate phpgiggle into osc. Could someone explain what this does, 'cos from the replies on this thread it sounds like whatever it does, it does it very well!
  18. Update on my progress - (3 weeks into this problem, and still going slowly. Not fixed yet, but theres always hope!). Right - I have re-imaged my server and started from scratch. I have checked and mod_rewrite is installed and working. I have triple checked my configure.php file, and I now dont have ugly sid's all over the place, until you start using the shopping basket (which I think is normal). I have re-installed the cache and seo contributions and I still cannot get this damn thing to work. I have narrowed down the problem a little more, and I believe it lies in this bit of code (as before) $cache->get_cache('GLOBAL'); which still breaks everything and returns a generic 404 error, but if I change this to $cache->get_cache(''); , then my site still works, but ultimate seo urls dont. Not being a clever chappy, I cant suss out what "GLOBAL" does or refers to. On the plus side, I have managed to now get Ultimate seo's switched on and sessions to remain intact, so now its just the small matter of getting the urls and links to show correct keywords....... Any help, pointers, advice or thoughts appreciated. After 3 weeks, I have been up to number 1 :thumbsup: in G00gle for countless search terms (basically every single one of my category names) and have now dissappeared completely off the radar again :( . Probably one of the quickest rise and falls in the history of search engine positioning, but I am now getting desperate to get back to No.1! I've tasted success and like the flavour - please help :'(
  19. I have cookies disabled on my site as it was causing problems with so many customers and search engines - is there a work around for this that prevents the sid showing all the time?! Whats the weird action in the footer? If you mean all my categories showing up, thats a very deliberate seo technique. If not, what do you mean? Will look into what updates automatically on my server - good thinking batman! Bobby - I have checked my httpd.conf file against about 6 others that are on various forums around osc, but i cannot see anything in there which would cause this problem; I'm pretty sure the problem is in there too, I just cant figure where.....where can I post or email the contents of the https.conf for people to peruse - if you think the one at the top of this page is long, you aint seen nothing yet!! lol!
  20. Hi Bobby!! Right, after a lot of hair pulling and teeth gnashing, we have come to a few conclusions about my ultimate seo setup; to give others a brief background, I installed this a while back and have got great results from all major search engines, and many orders. All of a sudden 3 days ago, BANG everything returned a 404 error page, and the only way I could get my site operational was to completely remove ultimate seo from the code. Every time I tried to re-add it to application_top, my site went haywire again. Bobby tried with me last night to see what the problem was, and between us we were completely stumped. By careful tweaking, I now have (nearly) all the code into my application_top file, and my site still works. The bit which breaks my site every single time i add it in is this line of code: $cache->get_cache('GLOBAL'); Does anybody have any idea 1) why this causes my site to return a 404 error (which btw is not my servers 404 page but a generic 404 error page...?) 2) why all of a sudden on sunday evening this line decided to cause problems, bearing in mind that I am the only person with access to my server, and I was tucked up in bed...? Anyway, another little glitch I have noticed which may or may not be related is this - when I turn on ultimate SEO's in my control panel, it is nearly impossible to login and order anything on my site as every page returns a brand new session_id - you can log in, look at an item, when you go to add it to basket, the site wants you to login. Now login, the site has forgotten why you wanted to login to begin with! Sure fire way to frustrate customers!! The second you set ultimate seo to off, the sessions remain static and customers can order.... Is this all part and parcel of the same issue, and if so what??? I know it is infuriating having large httpd.conf files posted on the forums, so anybody who is interested can pick mine up by instant messaging me - the msn im address is on my member card, or send me a private message through the forum.... :thumbsup:
  21. Sorry, please forget the above post - i unistalled and redid everything, all now working fine. Also slightly incorrect as I was previously using YASU, not nimmits sef contrib. One quick question, how difficult is it to add code to the seo_rewrite.php script to enable mapping of previously YASU'd pages to the new ones?? I appreciate that there are loads of SEO contribs and it is impossible (or would at least make it very bulky) to cover every eventuality in the seo_rewrite code, but I would like to get my teeth sunk into the code so that I dont lose out on the excellent search engine rankings I have got myself by presenting a PAGE NOT FOUND result to customers who find me in Yahoo etc. Any ideas??
  22. Hi Chemo - great contrib - have been working with nimmit's sef for a while and yours looks to be a slimmer and quicker implimentation of a similar ilk, and very very easy to install. That said, I have managed to muck up something along the way; luckily I am using this on a test site, not my live one, but for some reason, all my links have a double domain name in them - for example: Old links: www.brendanbum.co.uk/jewellery/earrings-drop-earrings.php (with nimmit's contrib) New links: www.brendanbum.co.uk/jewellery/www.brendanbum.co.uk/jewellery/earrings-drop-earrings-c-45_339.html (with ultimate seo's) I have double checked the install and cant see where I have managed to call the domain twice - any ideas?? Also, just a quick question - would this work with gzip enabled, as every other seo package I have looked into wont combine compression with the rewrite facility.... Thanks!
  23. Hi Rob From what I remember, this post - http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...90entry308916 answers your question pretty comprehensively - bit longwinded, but the results are worth it! Good luck
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