Acatalog

[nka]

I've seen that we still have to keep the folder as acatlog in V8 on another post. Are there any plans to change this?

If I'm honest I wouldn't have chosen Actinic in the first place if I'd realised that I couldn't change this from the outset and won't be upgrading to V8 if it isn't addressed, I think i'll end up movinng to another product instead. I don't expect to upgrade for at least another six months anyway but I like to start planning these things out in my head.

Ideally I'd prefer to stay with Actinic but I really hate that directory name!

[pinbrook]

Before dismissing the product due to the naming convention of one folder I'd be interested to know what is the reason for not liking the acatalog folder name? It seems a rather arbitrary reason for dismissing one of the market leader in UK ecommerce.

And yes it ispossible to change it, you would have to do it in the database, a careful search of the forum wil lthrough up a solution as to how others have done this in the past. It may be in the advanced userguide too

[nka]

A few reasons (and these are just my opinion so I fully accept many will disagree):

- I want the site to look as professional as possible but (I believe) this makes it 100% transparent that its an "out-of-the-box" site and a little bit amateurish

- I don't like the idea of carrying someone elses branding on my site, which is how I view it (they could have called it "catalog")

- I view the combination of the above two as a dilution of my brand and what I'm trying to build. I've worked on a number of sites over the past 6 years and these are things I never would have previously accepted. Poor research by me in advance this time

- Maybe this seems petty but it is also the American spelling of catalog. Not that theres anything inherently wrong with that but we are a UK site that (currently!) doesn't sell to the US

- Its a waste of a directory name. AFAIK, its unconfirmed whether or not the words used in a directory can help with SEO but I don't think its been conclusively proved either way in which case I'd prefer to err on the side of utilising it if possible

As I said, these are all just my opinion and I'm sure many won't agree but I above all I believe it doesn't reflect well on the site to have it.

Thanks for the pointer to previous posts, I've had a look at them before and they look like a bit of a cludge with potential to mess things up a bit and I'd rather not take the risk. I guess thats why I was hoping it would be easy in the new version.

[buspassjohn]

taking out acatalog

We took out the acatalog to make the Url's shorter and more relevant in Google searches, it wasn't a big thing to do and has worked perfectly well. Take a look at our site and you can see it makes everything more direct.

There are postings on here with instructions, just remember to do a 301 redirect on any Url's you may have had spidered with acatalog in.

[pinbrook]

A few reasons (and these are just my opinion so I fully accept many will disagree):

I was simply interested to hear why... I'm not going to disagree as everyone is entitled to an opinion. And this is one of those scenarios where it simply comes down to opinion.

As far as i know there have been no known issues with search engines and the use of the name acatalog, thus I can't be bothered to make the change as it has the potential to make problems (a very small one), for me it is easier to just leave it alone.

Its probably the same scenario is not placing all images in site1 folder and placing them in other folder names, it works and potentially is neater, you just have to remember what you did. I've got a cr*p memory, so I like things to be simple

[Jan]

You can take out the acatalog by changing a couple of fields in the setup table.

Here is a great post from techoweb that goes into great detail of how to do it

http://community.actinic.com/showthr...&threadid=2582

it has an alternative way in there from Chris Dicken as well.

Regards,

[nka]

Thanks, next time I have some time I shall give it a try

[Darren B]

I agree i hate the acatalog for the same reasons you mention

it means nothing, it is not the correct spelling. correct me if i am wrong the folder called shop would pretty much give everyone a clue and do not shoot me down in flames is actually more spider freindly/specific for people wanting to err buy?

a word of caution, i have been down the road of changing the folder name and if you decide to, never make a change to your network settings as you will end up back where you started.

you are not alone and many people have gripped over it, the fact that there is a solution to the problem would say to me that people want to be able to make changes t the folder name.

just my two pennith
Darren

[PaulGrimshaw]

I agree it looks very unprofessional having this in the name and also it just gibberish for the SEO side of things. This is the first I have heard of changing the directory name and will do that ASAP.

Could actinic not give us a little app that will remove this and then we can run the app everytime we do a network settings change or better still, why not have an option in the business settings where we could choose to use it or not.

Even better would be to have a folder name in each section/subsection page. Something where we could have a folder per section would be great for SEO... (i.e.. www.madmash.com/silver/rings.html or www.madmash.com/jewellery/silver/rings.html).

Paul.

[cbarling]

I agree with the comments made here.

As the person who (stupidly in retrospect) made the original decision to use the "acatalog" directory back in 1996, I can only tell you that it seemed a good idea at the time. The idea was that the Actinic shopping capability would be self-contained in one directory, independent of the rest of the site and therefore not running the risk of interfering with it. This has been largely irrelevent since brochure was introduced and it's been possible to manage all site pages in Actinic.

I can confirm that a fix to this is being actively considered for a future release along with some other similar issues that need sorting out.

I guess the fix would be to make the use of the directory optional, and if it is used to allow the user to specify what it should be called.

Chris

[Mike Hughes]

That sounds good to me.

Mike

[los_design]

Definite plus for me too...

"Planned for the future"

Version 8.02 or 9, 10?

Any clues

[Darren B]

Chris

It is nice of you to be honest, not many people hold there hands up nowdays

but if it could be added to the wish list somewhere near the top it would be good, but do not push the shipping changes down though.

To allow the user to specify the directory would probably be the best option for all although i guess not the easiest fix though.

Cheers
Darren

[cbarling]

Well we're definitely committed to improvements to shipping in a v8 maintenance release and we have committed to improving VAT inclusive pricing by v9.

Given our previous policy of never committing to anything definitely I guess that we are all "committed up" for now

Unfortunately, there's no chance of a fix to this issue in the short term given the need for an 8.0.2 bug fix release and some time after that the shipping changes.

So the best I can say is that I think that it's pretty likely in v9 or less likely before v9.

Hope that helps in some way. Sorry not to be more definite.

Chris