Using MYSQL/PHP from sellerdeck software

[STSO-UK]

Just a quick update, I did it the ajax/jquery route but seems that robots/crawlers cannot get to the content because of the ajax call, so for this method, it is good, but no good for SEO.


Is there guides to integrating full installation of PHP into sellerdeck?

Or can anyone shed some light!?



Thanks

[fergusw]

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/

[malbro]

Is there guides to integrating full installation of PHP into sellerdeck?

Thanks

No guide, Sellerdeck do not recommend making changes to the php that is part of the Sellerdeck application.

It is possible to use a php installation on your pc to access the Sellerdeck database and use this to generate the content you require, this can be a text file that is then imported into the Sellerdeck pages prior to uploading using the inbuilt php in Sellerdeck.

I did this last year and it worked well producing pages that contained all the extra dynamic information as part of the html files thus improving the SEO.

[STSO-UK]

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/

I read through this but I don't really want to start adding # & #! on the ends of my product page URLS.

[STSO-UK]

No guide, Sellerdeck do not recommend making changes to the php that is part of the Sellerdeck application.

It is possible to use a php installation on your pc to access the Sellerdeck database and use this to generate the content you require, this can be a text file that is then imported into the Sellerdeck pages prior to uploading using the inbuilt php in Sellerdeck.

I did this last year and it worked well producing pages that contained all the extra dynamic information as part of the html files thus improving the SEO.

So am I right in thinking this is how you do it . -

1. Install WAMP server.
2. Use php to write to actinic.mdb ie , Prod Name column , review, rating etc.


The calling the text file confuses me though. How would sellerdeck know for instance that a certain review would refer to that product ID if you just calling a simple text file?


Or would this be a better method.

Let reviews for products get wrote into mysql database on webserver,
Write a program to read mysql data and insert into sellerdeck's access database
Use variables to pull that data out (Or is it not possible to map your own variables from the database?)

[malbro]

The calling the text file confuses me though. How would sellerdeck know for instance that a certain review would refer to that product ID if you just calling a simple text file?

The text files contain HTML code and are named by product ID. The content was produced by reading data from an external database using a web service and formatted according to specific parameters. It is then simple to write PHP inside sellerdeck layouts to import the relevant text file (using the product id as the identifier) into the layout.

Let reviews for products get wrote into mysql database on webserver,
Write a program to read mysql data and insert into sellerdeck's access database
Use variables to pull that data out (Or is it not possible to map your own variables from the database?)

Yes you can use the locally based PHP to read your external database and then write to the access database. Accessing custom variables in the Sellerdeck database is a complex business due to the structure of the system but can be done, also bear in mind the limitations of an Access database in terms of the number of characters.

[STSO-UK]

The text files contain HTML code and are named by product ID. The content was produced by reading data from an external database using a web service and formatted according to specific parameters. It is then simple to write PHP inside sellerdeck layouts to import the relevant text file (using the product id as the identifier) into the layout.

Yes you can use the locally based PHP to read your external database and then write to the access database. Accessing custom variables in the Sellerdeck database is a complex business due to the structure of the system but can be done, also bear in mind the limitations of an Access database in terms of the number of characters.

Good shout about the access database.


Could you provide some code to use the text file method if you don't mind?

[NormanRouxel]

Assuming you write files names e.g. review_123456.txt into sub-folder of your Site folder called reviewsnippets (where 123456 is your Product ID). In your Product Layout:

<actinic:block php="true">
	$reviewfilename = 'reviewsnippets/review_<actinic:variable name="ProductID" encoding="perl" selectable="false" />.txt';
	if ( file_exists( $reviewfilename ) )
		{
		echo '<div class="review">' . file_get_contents( $reviewfilename ) . '</div>';
		}
</actinic:block>

N.B. untested but similar code used by me before.

If your Product ID's contain characters that are invalid in file names, then I'd suggest escaping them before creating and testing for the file name.

There are posts on the forum re directly querying the database. Search for odbc_connect and you'll find some.

[STSO-UK]

Assuming you write files names e.g. review_123456.txt into sub-folder of your Site folder called reviewsnippets (where 123456 is your Product ID). In your Product Layout:

<actinic:block php="true">
	$reviewfilename = 'reviewsnippets/review_<actinic:variable name="ProductID" encoding="perl" selectable="false" />.txt';
	if ( file_exists( $reviewfilename ) )
		{
		echo '<div class="review">' . file_get_contents( $reviewfilename ) . '</div>';
		}
</actinic:block>

N.B. untested but similar code used by me before.

If your Product ID's contain characters that are invalid in file names, then I'd suggest escaping them before creating and testing for the file name.

There are posts on the forum re directly querying the database. Search for odbc_connect and you'll find some.

Ahhhh Cheers Norman!

The ODBC_connect library is just what I need, I can do exactly what I need to do locally now!