Page Links on More Info Page below Product?

[dresdena1]

I just created a very large site.
700+ Pages / 17.5K More Info Pages

ShopSite has done a great job creating/managing it.

As an additional navigation aid to visitors, I was wondering if it is possible to add Page links directly below the Product on the More Information Pages?

I only want to assign specific brands to their respective products. Some of the Products have only 1 brand/category Page (so it's not a big deal), but other Products are from very large brands that may have 30 or 40 category pages. I have breadcrumbs setup and I also have category links at the bottom of each category page, but I think it would be beneficial to the visitors if they can also find category links below the Product on the More Info Page. It is very large site (www.affordable-natural-supplements.com) and I think that any navigational aid would be worth adding.

Please let me know if this is possible. I saw an old post from 2007 and it was not (at that time), but I am wondering if that has changed.
Thank you.

[ShopSite Lauren]

Where are you hoping that the links are pulled from? Are you wanting the page links from the page the product is assigned to (the page links from the category page in your breadcrumb trail)? Or are you wanting a set of links that is specific to a brand?

There isn't a way to have the page links assigned to a page added to the more information page. Plus, if you did that, and if a product was assigned to more than 1 page, then the links at the bottom of the more information page would change depending on the last page that was published that the product was assigned to. That said, I have seen merchants setup SSIs or use the ShopSite include feature to create sets of pages that they can then include on any page they want. The advantage of using SSIs is that you can make a change in the links (such as add a new link), and only have to publish that SSI, not your entire site, to see the new link appear on all your product more information pages. You wouldn't need to have an SSI for all brands, just the ones that have many links. For example, I went through the first few brands on your brand page, A to B Calm and Absorbaid don't have any sub categories, so they wouldn't need an SSI, but Action Labs Digestives has a handful of sub categories, so you would want to setup an SSI for Action Labs Digestives.

[Jim]

I'm still not sure what you are trying to accomplish. Looking at a product moreinfo page you have navigation on the left and the bottom of the page. Are you wanting to put more navigation directly under the product info? (I was looking at page 27562.html)

If that is the case you could use the extra product fields to contain any links that you want to put there. This could be done in two ways.
1. Enter the links directly into one of the extra product fields and then use the template tag [-- product.fieldx --] (where x is the number of the field with the data) in the template to display the content of that field. This would require that you put all the links that would be possible for all products in the specific product field.

2 If you have links that would be common to multiple products you could create include files with those links in them. You would put the name of the include file that contains the file with links for a particular group of products in the product.fieldx. Then in the template you would have something like

Code: Select all

Your normal moreinfo template stuff here
[-- var.file  product.field1--]
[-- include var.file --]


When I tested this I put "jim.test" (without the quotes) in product field 1. I created an include file named jim.test with the text "<h1>JIM IS TOPS</h1>
when I published the store the content of the jim.test file was placed on the page below the product info.

Using this method you would create include files for your various brands that contain the navigation you want. Then put the name of the appropriat include file in the product.fieldx of each product that fits that brand. The same include file could be used for multiple products. By having a separate include file for each brand when something changes you just need to change the include file and it will be reflected on all the appropriate pages the next time you publish your store.

[dresdena1]

Lauren and Jim,
Thanks! I had thought of the includes either server side or possibly contained within a ShopSite Product Field and inserted below the item, but I was just wondering if its was possible to simply assign Page links (in some way) similarly to how they are assigned to a Page.

The includes are a good idea and probably the way that I will go if the owner of the site decides he wants to have additional brand/category linking.

Thanks again!