Best Seller via Section

[Truska]

Can I select a different Best Seller depending on the section I am in. It may mean creating a new variable for the best seller and making it selectable via section then getting the info from the product and displaying it. But I am not sure how.
Is it possible to create a new custom variable that would be a product (selected from a product list) then to use that product and its information as a best seller to display and link to.
We will have up to 18 top level sections, each to have its own best seller that will be the same through all sub-sections.
At the top level we will either select one of the 18 to display and change it regularly or ideally - and this gets more complicated - display one either in rotation or randomly.
Anyhow first part - getting them in the section is the priority... Any help or pointers much appreciated.
Thanks

[jont]

There is a thread in the KB about limiting what is shown for the 2 marketing lists. With a diligent custom variable you can set the list to show only a single product depending on which section you are viewing at the time.

[jont]

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=45350

[Truska]

Thanks Jont

I was able to use that code and create a custom variable at section level to select from the list and as long as we manage the order of the list against the sections then it seems to work - A highly easy solution to what I thought was going to be a real hard one so resolve - Thank you very much.

This really is a clever application when you get to know and understand it more.....

Regards

[Truska]

Trying to take this further and use a Custom variable to use as a value to select against ListIndex in Mini Best Seller Layout using:

<actinic:variable name="ListIndex" /> == <actinic:variable name="BestSellerNumber" />

where bestSellerNumber is a custom variable and would be set to a vaue to correspond with ID in Best Seller list

The problem is the Mini Best Seller Layout can not seemingly read/see/inherit the value from the Custom Property so it does not work.

Is this correct? How can I get round this problem without having to have multiple layouts for each and every possible best seller ID.

Hope this is clear - any help or advise much appreciated.

[leehack]

You'd never do it with just one variable, as that would only cover the first part of the range, i.e. the less than first part when breaking the 20 possible products into groups. The next parts then need a larger than and a less than parameter >= 4 AND <=8 etc.

On this site (2 rows at the bottom of the central column) - http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk/...io_System.html - i split up both the new products and best sellers listing into groups of 4 products, each in its own layout with parameters, so 10 lists of 4 in effect, they were then called lists 1-10 (best sellers were 1-5 and new products 6-10)and client selects which ones to show on the relevant sections. You will always need to have preset ranges unless you get really technical and there are better solutions than doing that anyway, where you can create your own product lists on a page like you see at the top of that example page where the hottest products table is shown, this can be set on any page and contain any products.

If i were you, i'd drop any ideas of using the marketing lists, the 20 product limit is just too restrictive, focus on creating your own product lists which can be set on a per section basis and it has much more power and flexibility. Like related products on a section basis you could say i guess.

[Truska]

Thanks for reply - in this case our objective is actually very simple - thee will be about 12 to top level sections eventually and each one will have one, and only one, best seller. There the "==" is fine, I do not need a range but do understand exactly what you mean there.

I want to make the selection as easy as possibly for non-it staff and I had identified that the Best Seller products are numbered and you can have a numeric custom variable to match. What could be simpler..... Except the custom variable do not seem to be available to call from within the best seller layouts - you can call it the line before or after but not from within - Not being a Perl person but more php this seems rather odd but as the site is complied to html rather than served to the browser I can see where the problem comes from I guess.

Not tried this yet - will play about this morning, but is it possible to set a custom property at section level to an actual product then call it separately and display it down the edge or across the top etc. - as if a best seller? and being able to choose it by section- even though the product itself maybe in a different section....

[NormanRouxel]

Assuming that the best seller for each top-level section is a product directly within that section. Then here is a way to do this.

Create a product-level variable called "BestSellerForSection" of type True/False, with default false.

Paste this code into your overall layout

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22PageType%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22Section%22">
	<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22SectionLevel%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%201" >
		<actinic:block type="ProductList"/>
			<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22BestSellerForSection%22%20%2f%3e" >
				<actinic:variable name="BestSellerItem" value="Mini Best Seller Layout" />
			</actinic:block>
		</actinic:block>
	</actinic:block>
</actinic:block>

In your product details, set BestSellerForSection true as appropriate.

[Truska]

Thanks Norman - before I read your reply I managed to get it working by using a different hard coded layout for each section, selected via a Custom Property.

A bit more work than just selecting a number and feeding it to a single layout but as the number of sections is limited and the layout change very simple it will work and is working - for now at least.

I will keep your reply to hand just in case. On it though, having looked at the code, does the product have to be in the top level section itself, or with a sub section of the top level. The codes second Block is IF section Level == 1 so, as my products will be in level 2, and some cases maybe 4, it would not work, would it? We want BestSeller to display throughout all levels of the section.

And the location of the code , Outer Layout? I guess.

When I get a moment I will have a play with this but as it has taken me a lot more hours to get to where I am I need to push on and catch up a bit.

Really appreciate your help - may have an upgrade to v10 to purchase for another site from you soon anyway - in discussions with client at the moment.

Thanks again

[NormanRouxel]

David

Getting a single product to persist through a hierarchy of sub-sections would be much more difficult. Unfortunately what I've posted only deals with a single best seller from the top-level Section that it's in.

The reason for the SectionLevel == 1 is to only run the code when in the dozen or so top-level sections. Otherwise it might run on every page and that would be an N Squared number of times and thus slow down your site building.

One route might be to generate the best seller on the top-section and save all its code into a PHP variable that you spit out on sub-sections. No looping overhead there.

[leehack]

20 best sellers layouts, each limited by list index to just one product. The list to be used is then set on the TLS and all subsections have 'use parent'. That's about 30 minutes work max to setup I'd have thought.

[Truska]

Thanks guys -

The simple solution is for Actinic to make custom variables available to use within ALL layouts - but then maybe there are technical reasons why this is not so - I am not a programmer......

But I do have it working albeit I will have to have up to 20, nearly identical, layouts and matching Layout Selectors that can be selected using 2 custom properties and the ListIndex is just hard coded to ==1, 2 or 3 etc......

Probably there is a better way, maybe even using one custom property or using php to pass variables etc, but this will suffice, does not add a load to the server and is not hard for user to set up - and it seems to work..... important.... Can improve it at a later date if necessary...

So thank you for help and advice once again....

Regards

[leehack]

What are you using as the place of setting for the variable, I think that may be your problem, include 'site'.

[JGLIGHTING]

Hi

I am trying to get the code below to layout in a row but not having any joy.

Can anyone help me out or point me in the right direction please.

Elliott

ps Thanks Norman for that bit of code

Assuming that the best seller for each top-level section is a product directly within that section. Then here is a way to do this.

Create a product-level variable called "BestSellerForSection" of type True/False, with default false.

Paste this code into your overall layout

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22PageType%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22Section%22">
	<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22SectionLevel%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%201" >
		<actinic:block type="ProductList"/>
			<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22BestSellerForSection%22%20%2f%3e" >
				<actinic:variable name="BestSellerItem" value="Mini Best Seller Layout" />
			</actinic:block>
		</actinic:block>
	</actinic:block>
</actinic:block>

In your product details, set BestSellerForSection true as appropriate.

[leehack]

Its aimed at only showing one product per section which is one you set manually, so can't see how it can fail to lay out in a row, any format used would be in a row effectively. Perhaps you could expand further on what you're trying to do.