Adding same infomation to all products

[kathynewman]

I need to add a bunch of information to 50% of our products. This information is going to be indentical - though in the future may change. Is there an easy way I can do this within actinic rather than copying & pasting and then having to change every product when this information changes? The information can't go in a pop up window - it has to appear in the middle of a product description.

I had a look at variables but got bit confused - can it be done this way so that where I want the information to appear I just enter [actinic:info] or somthing similar.

Any ideas gratefully received!

Thanks

Kathy

[buspassjohn]

Just make a copy product template, call this 'withinfo' or some such, put the info in and use this produt template for all the products where you want to use the info.
To edit the info you just then need to alter in design in any product using 'withinfo' and it changes in all.

[kathynewman]

Thanks for that - just re-read my original post and realised didn't say that want this "other info" to go in the middle of the product description - so think that probably can't do it via product template.

Back to the drawing board!

Kathy

[buspassjohn]

In the Middle!
You're just trying to make life difficult!! can't see any way without individual pasting of variable/html, whatever, very time consuming, can't you put it at the end of description, then you can add it to template.

[pinbrook]

you could put in it the middle if you then create a 2nd variable for the rest of the product description.

so you have 3 variables in all

product description
common text
rest of product description

[kathynewman]

Sorry Jo can you explain in bit more detail how I would do that (having a really brain dead day today!)

Attached image shows exactly what I want.
The product description is entered in the product desciption, the Price, Qty & Add to basket (i've hard coded in - this is the bit I want to add to 50% of products - the remaining 50% of products are going to have a more standard layout) and the bit below is a fab piece of code I got from Norman which is run from within the product description.

hope this makes sense!

Kathy

[Duncan Rounding]

All that info (tabbed ingredients etc) look like they're after the product description in which case you can just modify the template and include a product scoped variable in the product layout.

[kathynewman]

The tabbed bits are actually defined within the product description

Kathy

[NormanRouxel]

Ahah! <Hears name and wakes up>. That's a new add-on of mine Tabbed Product Descriptions. It allows you to embed a tabbed area into your product description - either replacing the entire description or somewhere in the middle if required. Kathy asked if such a thing could be automated so I wrote it and sent her a copy to test. It seems to be working fine so I guess I should release it.

Anyway if you've a lump of text that you want embedded into the middle of some product details then you can do it as follows.

Create a Product level Variable EXTRATEXT and put your text into it as the default value.

Then in your product descriptions simply add [EXTRATEXT] where you want this to be displayed. E.g.

Blah blah [EXTRATEXT] blah.

When you need to change that text globally, do so via Settings / Site Options.

[kathynewman]

Thanks Norman - yes it's working very well.

I'm sure i'm being a bit thick here but can you tell me where to add the text I want in the variable. Gone to Design, Library, Variables, Product and gone to New Variable, called it EXTRAINFO and ticked Place of Setting to be Product but can't see where I put in the text - not having good day here at all!

Kathy

[NormanRouxel]

Hi, Kathy. You can set the default value for the variable in the Basic Definition under Top Level Value. make sure you also set Inital Value to Use Parent. Subsequent changes can be made via Settings / Site Options.

[kathynewman]

Thanks again - found that and for text it works fine - however what I want to appear in the variable are other variables and that doesn't seem to work.

If I enter
<table width="100%" border="0">
<tr>
<th width="26%" valign="top" scope="row"><div align="left">
[PriceListRetail]
</div></th>
<td width="22%" valign="bottom">[QuantityCaption]</td>
<td width="22%" valign="bottom">[QuantityPrompt]
</span>
<input type="text" name="Q_[ProductReference]" size="4" value="[DefaultQuantity]" class="form_input_general" /></td>
<td width="30%" align="right" valign="bottom"><div align="left">
[AddToCartButton]
</div></td>
</tr>
</table>

into a product description it works perfectly, but enter it into a variable it doesn't. Taken couple of screenshots to show difference.

Any ideas anyone!?

[NormanRouxel]

Variables are atomic. The data in them cannot be expanded further. You'd need to do this by instead putting your text into a Layout and including that within Square brackets.

You'll need to create a new layout type EXTRAINFO, within that a Selector EXTRATEXT and within that a single Layout EXTRATEXT. Set the Selector to Hide Selector If Only One Choice Available. Make sure that TESTINCLUDE layout is within the Values / Layouts Offerred..

Then you may get away with embedding [EXTRATEXT] into your descriptions.

However it's likely that Actinic will be unhappy with embedded HTML here, so start and end everything in that EXTRATEXT layout with !!< and >!!

[kathynewman]

Thank you Norman - after a bit of tearing my hair out I got it to work

Now all works perfectly - phew..........

Kathy

[leehack]

Try this Kathy, may help in the short term.