Thanks ShopSite!

[Webmaster]

I figured out a way to manage my complicated workflow while depending solely
upon ShopSite to do all the publishing. I don't know why I made this more
difficult than it really had to be! The trick was to have ShopSite manage my
sub-category links while it currently does this for the most part. However,
it took my master mind to get it to accomplish this on it's own.

The issue is not whether or not ShopSite is capable of supporting an
automated workflow scheme but, that it relies solely upon it's own database
to do this. Most of the work I complain about has to do with formatting my
tables which get imported into ShopSite to publish. Because I have a very
complicated way in which I organize these tables to get the desired custom
template effects, I have a hard time keeping track of a few necessary fields
in the page database.

I currently have danchuk.com set up to divide category pages into 20 product
listings per page. There are also sub-category links for each of these
pages. Because of the way my clients break product variations down into
separate sku numbers, we have to strictly use the ShopSite page database to
manage all of these links. As you can imagine by the size website, it would
be very complicated if the table fields were not relational in some way.
It's almost as though I have substituted a flat file for a relational
database set-up.

The answer is to simply program macro's that work with Microsoft Excel that
do most the work for me. If I go this route then I can rely more heavily on
Macromedia workflows that can compliment Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that
get uploaded into ShopSite. Plus Macromedia software can manage online
content better than anything out on the market right now. My clients usually
give me enormous size Quark, PageMaker files anyway. It would be nice to
have Dreamweaver suck hard copy information straight from the file using
XML. That would be a Webmaster's dream!

I remember reading here a few years back that a ShopSite user accomplished a
very complex workflow using macro's in Excel. I wish I could find her
information here!

I would still like to have a CGI script that can write ShopSite orders to a
remote custom database. But for now, the orders export feature will do if I
can figure out how to customize the field names for their import script.

Thanks again ShopSite for thinking about us way down the road!

Jerred (Stuart)

[Webmaster]

On 7/31/02 3:29 PM, in article B96DB2D3.29A4%webmaster@idgr.com, "Webmaster"
<webmaster@idgr.com> wrote:

Oh yeah, for those that didn't understand a word I just said... If you take
a good look through the danchuk.com website, you will be shocked to discover
that I published the entire thing through ShopSite WITHOUT the use of the
"more information page" feature. In other words, the "more information page"
feature has been replaced by the page database and still manages a 3 level
hierarchy of products! How's that for lack of an Ecom Assembler?

I figured out a way to manage my complicated workflow while depending solely
upon ShopSite to do all the publishing. I don't know why I made this more
difficult than it really had to be! The trick was to have ShopSite manage my
sub-category links while it currently does this for the most part. However,
it took my master mind to get it to accomplish this on it's own.

The issue is not whether or not ShopSite is capable of supporting an
automated workflow scheme but, that it relies solely upon it's own database
to do this. Most of the work I complain about has to do with formatting my
tables which get imported into ShopSite to publish. Because I have a very
complicated way in which I organize these tables to get the desired custom
template effects, I have a hard time keeping track of a few necessary fields
in the page database.

I currently have danchuk.com set up to divide category pages into 20 product
listings per page. There are also sub-category links for each of these
pages. Because of the way my clients break product variations down into
separate sku numbers, we have to strictly use the ShopSite page database to
manage all of these links. As you can imagine by the size website, it would
be very complicated if the table fields were not relational in some way.
It's almost as though I have substituted a flat file for a relational
database set-up.

The answer is to simply program macro's that work with Microsoft Excel that
do most the work for me. If I go this route then I can rely more heavily on
Macromedia workflows that can compliment Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that
get uploaded into ShopSite. Plus Macromedia software can manage online
content better than anything out on the market right now. My clients usually
give me enormous size Quark, PageMaker files anyway. It would be nice to
have Dreamweaver suck hard copy information straight from the file using
XML. That would be a Webmaster's dream!

I remember reading here a few years back that a ShopSite user accomplished a
very complex workflow using macro's in Excel. I wish I could find her
information here!

I would still like to have a CGI script that can write ShopSite orders to a
remote custom database. But for now, the orders export feature will do if I
can figure out how to customize the field names for their import script.

Thanks again ShopSite for thinking about us way down the road!

Jerred (Stuart)