Single Product Page Converter

[brucet]

For sites upgrading to version 11 that want to implement the new Product Page feature, we now have a beta release of a conversion utility that can automatically enable Product Pages for all products in your catalogue. It also allows you to choose link options and a few other settings.

This utility can also convert Extended Information Pages to Product Pages, for sites that have implemented a 'single product per page' layout using the Advanced User Guide method.

For more information and to download the app, see www.actinic.co.uk/about/Beta.php4

Please feed back any comments to our Beta support forum. We will try to correct any major issues, but please bear in mind this is a free utility designed to make the process a bit easier, and not a universal solution.

[ChrisL]

What about those of us who have used the Sub-Section Route to implement SPP's in v10?
After all, the Advanced Guide does offer both methods....

Does the conversion utility work in this instance, and if not, when will it?

[Goz]

The download centre page says :

It cannot fully convert sites that use subsections as single product pages.

I'm not sure what that means. Best try it and see what happens.

[Goz]

From the help that comes with the converter :

Limitations
If your site uses subsections as single-product pages, and you want to benefit from the performance improvement available by using the new Product Pages in v11, you will need to move your products into their parent sections and delete the single-product subsections, either before or after running this tool.

[Jan]

This is a great tool and thanks for providing it, it will save people a lot of work but I just wanted to point out that the single product pages in V11 don't have a breadcrumb trail, so it might not be the best idea to convert extended info pages that do have both menus and breadcrumb trails.

Regards,

[leehack]

Thanks for this Bruce, quick question regarding performance. Is there any quantifiable evidence that the new feature is a quicker way of doing SPP than using subsections or is this anecdotal? Just wondering whether to start advising that people should in fact convert to this new method.

[Duncan Rounding]

As this method reduces the section count I would assume better performance on large sites. Only drawback as I see it is the lack of breadcrumbs.

[JGLIGHTING]

Thanks for this Bruce, quick question regarding performance. Is there any quantifiable evidence that the new feature is a quicker way of doing SPP than using subsections or is this anecdotal? Just wondering whether to start advising that people should in fact convert to this new method.

My site uses extended info page for SSP. I was testing to see if the upload is quicker with V11 using SSP built in feature.
I found out the way I got it in V10 uploads quicker, but only by 5 mins or so.

The only good point from my point of view, is that you edit some of the meta and page titles easier.

One thing that might stop my going over to the new way is all the marketing links uses CGI links. At the moment all my marketing links uses the real URL.(A clever bit of code from Norman)
Not sure if it matter for SEO or not?

[leehack]

As this method reduces the section count I would assume better performance on large sites. Only drawback as I see it is the lack of breadcrumbs.

I found the subsection route quicker than the extended info method on a number of large sites which had sections with particularly large amounts of products within them. I can recall a page with around 60 products being 1 min to preview as extended info pages and just 4 seconds with sections.

For years i have been advocating the subsection method, just wondering whether there is any hard evidence to draw upon speed wise to say these people should now convert. If not, no problem, that's cool, just want to give sage advice if i can, if there is any.

[leehack]

My site uses extended info page for SSP. I was testing to see if the upload is quicker with V11 using SSP built in feature.
I found out the way I got it in V10 uploads quicker, but only by 5 mins or so.

The only good point from my point of view, is that you edit some of the meta and page titles easier.

One thing that might stop my going over to the new way is all the marketing links uses CGI links. At the moment all my marketing links uses the real URL.(A clever bit of code from Norman)
Not sure if it matter for SEO or not?

So you are saying extended info method is quicker than the new SPP and i am saying subsections are quicker than extended info pages. How can we draw some cold hard evidence, tough one to gauge without hours of work. Hopefully some benchmarking has been done to show what is best for existing users.

All marketing lists have always used cgi-bin links and no, it's not great for SEO, plain links are better, it's one of the most wanted items on the wishlist though, so they are aware of the issue and will get round to it no doubt.

[Jan]

The SSPs are shared between products and duplicates and so you would have fewer pages on your website and so that would save space (not that much of a benefit IMO). When sites have a lot of products (5000+ perhaps) having a section for every product can make Actinic run slowly and upload take a long time.

My advice would be to stick with what you have it you don't have masses and masses of products, or to stick with extended info pages if you have them set up (add custom vars for the meta data perhaps). If you are experiencing performance issues when using or uploading catalog and have single product pages set up with products in their own sections, make a copy of the database and try using the new SSPs and experiement with the copied site in test mode to see if you get and improvement. This will also let you see differences in site appearance etc that might occur from the changes. That is just my opinion though.

Regards,

[ChrisL]

Thanks for all the opinions expressed by everyone. Having used each subsections to provide custom SEO per descendant product, it is now especially clear that it's best to stick with what I have, and add new products using the same subsection method. I fear, probably rightly, that to move all the products back to the parent section, deleting the subsections as I go, then converting using the utility, will lose all the SEO (Page Title, Metas etc) from the subsections. Clearly not a good idea in this instance!

[leehack]

Converter sounds a good idea, there are lots of sites using subsections. My only concern is page names and how these are maintained as SEO could be hit hard.

[TraceyHand]

I would have thought that any good converter should copy subsection page-names to the SPP counterparts?
The only loss then would be the removed duplicate pages and I suppose you'd have to take that into account, when weighing up the Pros 'n' Cons of changing over, before converting.

[Mike Hughes]

It would be good if someone from Actinic could explain what the differences are. As I understand the new product pages are essentially a bit like cut down section pages. This makes them smaller in the database and needing much less processing than a section page does due to things like there being no daughter pages, less navigation to check, limiting to one product per page (?), etc.

Mike