Order Anywhere Help

[Chris]

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[jim]

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[Chris]

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty. Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris


jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[loren_d_c]

Can you paste an actual example URL that you are trying to use the #sku with?

-Loren


Chris wrote:

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty. Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris

jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[Chris]

I think this is what you mean....

<a
href="http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/cgi-mlcswoodworking/sb/order.cgi?storeid=*1afe644ab05c2aea015e7cae768baf&dbname=products&sku=%237849&function=add">

[Add to Cart]</a>

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

Loren wrote:

Can you paste an actual example URL that you are trying to use the #sku with?

-Loren

Chris wrote:

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty. Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris

jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[jim]

Chris,
When I click on that link the following product is added to the cart, "Lock Mitre bit 2" - 1/2" shank" Is that the correct one? If it is then your
orderanywhere link is working correctly. If not what product should have been added and what is its SKU?

Jim

Chris wrote:

I think this is what you mean....

a
href="http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/cgi-mlcswoodworking/sb/order.cgi?storeid=*1afe644ab05c2aea015e7cae768baf&dbname=products&sku=%237849&function=add"

[Add to Cart]</a

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

Loren wrote:

Can you paste an actual example URL that you are trying to use the #sku with?

-Loren

Chris wrote:

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty. Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris

jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[loren_d_c]

I got the same product in the shopping cart as Jim when I click that link.

Note that the problem with the # character in the URL without escaping it is because browsers interpret anything after a # as a reference to an internal page
anchor.

-Loren



jim wrote:

Chris,
When I click on that link the following product is added to the cart, "Lock Mitre bit 2" - 1/2" shank" Is that the correct one? If it is then your
orderanywhere link is working correctly. If not what product should have been added and what is its SKU?

Jim

Chris wrote:

I think this is what you mean....

a
href="http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/cgi-mlcswoodworking/sb/order.cgi?storeid=*1afe644ab05c2aea015e7cae768baf&dbname=products&sku=%237849&function=add"

[Add to Cart]</a

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

Loren wrote:

Can you paste an actual example URL that you are trying to use the #sku with?

-Loren

Chris wrote:

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty. Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris

jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub: When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#" character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which (as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons. With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file, what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

[Chris]

You are right. It worked for me too. Guess I've been looking at it a
bit too closely. I knew why the "#" itself was problematic (ie. anchor
tags) but I was so focused on that I didn't look at the URL they had
actually put into the page--they just dropped the "#" altogether from
the SKUs, instead of leaving it as "%23."

I think this will work out OK now.

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

Loren wrote:

I got the same product in the shopping cart as Jim when I click that
link.

Note that the problem with the # character in the URL without escaping
it is because browsers interpret anything after a # as a reference to
an internal page anchor.

-Loren



jim wrote:

Chris,
When I click on that link the following product is added to the
cart, "Lock Mitre bit 2" - 1/2" shank" Is that the correct one?
If it is then your
orderanywhere link is working correctly. If not what product should
have been added and what is its SKU?

Jim

Chris wrote:

I think this is what you mean....

a

href="http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/cgi-mlcswoodworking/sb/order.cgi?storeid=*1afe644ab05c2aea015e7cae768baf&dbname=products&sku=%237849&function=add"


[Add to Cart]</a

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS

Loren wrote:

Can you paste an actual example URL that you are trying to use
the #sku with?

-Loren

Chris wrote:

When we add the product to the cart, the cart remains empty.
Also, the %23 fix
doesn't seem to work, at least not when I manually re-enter
the link into the
Location bar in my browser, correcting the # to a "%23".

Thanks!

Chris

jim wrote:

Chris,
What problem are you experiencing with the #sku value?

Are you manually creating the add-to-cart by sku links? If
so try using %23
for the # in the link. For example #12345 would be shown
as %2312345.

Jim

Chris wrote:

Hi all,

We're running a Shopsite Pro (v 6.3) store and have run
into a silly but
troublesome issue.

Our web designer makes custom pages for all our products
and adds "Order
Anywhere" linkers manually. When he started a few years
ago, there was
no "Order by SKU" feature, so he used the Order linkers
with the itemnum
value. We now have about 1600 products on 100 pages with
Order buttons
of this type (which is fine).

Now, we want to have our print catalog online with order
buttons
embedded in the pages. The company who does this needs
the Shopping
cart order button string. Logically, I thought that the
order by SKU
version would be best for them to use. Here's the rub:
When we started
adding items, we decided to write the SKUs with the "#"
character in
front of them in the SKU field. This is preventing the
Order Anywhere
by SKU function from working.

So, we have 2 options:

1) Use the old Order Anywhere strings. In this case, we'd
have to
provide the catalog online people with a mapping of the
SKUs to their
accompanying Shopsite itemnum. Is there any easier way to
find this
mapping than to use the itemnum.pl script mentioned in the
Shopsite
Knowledgebase?

2) Download our Product database, import it into Excel and
do a bulk
removal of all the "#" signs from the SKU field, then
re-upload the
database. Of course, we're very reluctant to do this
because any
problem could re-import the database from scratch which
(as I understand
it) could undo all our old style order anywhere buttons.
With 1600
items on nearly 100 pages, this would be disastrous. Does
anyone have
any experience with this type of updating and how to do it
safely (ie.
what kind of things to be sure not to change in the file,
what file type
to save as, etc.)? Any reassurances regarding the safety
of our order
anywhere links? (We would use the "Backup" function first
of course).

Any other possibilities I'm overlooking?

Thanks!

Chris

MLCS