Wish List?

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi,

I want to have an item per page option for items that are selected on the new products/best sellers list, or if I link to a particular product rather than the whole section like it does now.

Is this possible yet? I seem to remember this being on the wish list, if its not still, can you add my name for wishlist v9.

Incidently, another product, E*** does this and its great for jumping to as above and very very good for web searching as you can have every item on its own page with its own name... this also means the search results page can be a proper search results page of actual items thats made on the fly (as if you were browsing a section).

Thanks,
Paul.

[cdicken]

Hi Paul

With version 8 one thing you can do is turn the pop-up page for extended information into a 'full details' page. This page opens in the same window, rather than a pop-up window, and includes an add to cart button. Therefore, you can have a compact listing of products which then links through to an automatically-generated page containing the full details of the product, with larger image etc.

Details of this are in the Advanced User Guide p15 'Creating a Listing Page which Links Through to Full Details Pages'

Does this help you get towards what you want?

[PaulGrimshaw]

Thanks chris. It is something I will look at as I prefer that rather than a popup, however, its not really what I mean about the item per page thing. After re-reading my question, I didnt do a very good job at explaining what I am after.

Have a look at this page (old and dead): http://www.madmash.com/shop/e***.html.

When you click on the links on the left, it opens up a page like actinic does (i.e. by category). For example, if you click on necklaces you will see all the necklaces. The page shows everything all in one. Note the page layout.

Now, if you try searching for something, like, "floating" in the quick search, you will find that the layout of the results page is the same as the category. THAT is what I mean! Basically, each item has a 'layout' and the category file and the results file are both made using the same layout, just that the results is done on the fly when you do a search.

I much prefer actinic to that other software, but this is the only thing, coming from them, that I think lets Act down. I dont want to have a results page that shows a thumbnail and a link to that item, which when you click actually goes to the whole category section. Having a results page that is in effect a temporary category page is far superior, makes the customer feel like its part of the main site and integrated, and when the customer clicks on an item it goes to the details.

As we design a item layout for use in the main catalog, could this not be put into another results.html page that is populated by a bit of perl? If you can get that licked* then your onto a winner .

Thanks,
Paul.

* - If you do get this done, give us the option of saving that search page in a database (i.e. if I search "Floating Necklace" then store that). And then have actinic use that database each time it updates the website to create 'search result' pages (i.e. floating_necklace.html). These linked to a previous_searches.html page would be great for SEO... They would need to be updated on a per web-update basis so that only current items stay shown.

[cdicken]

OK - gotcha.

Actinic doesn't work like this at the moment, but if you check out Actinic Express - our online solution - you will see that it works exactly like that. This shows you how we would make Actinic look if we could build it from scratch today.

Now - the plan for the future (and the first person to ask me for a date will win a booby prize) will be to more closely integrate our online and offline solutions. So something like an Express style search results page is a possibility.

Just don't ask me when...