'use parent' to html address via Access

[losthope]

Hi I hope some one can help me….. within the ‘online catalogue’ using ‘content’ The properties tab the product is set to ‘use parent()’ I want this to be the direct html address. Is there a way of putting the html address directly into the data base using Access instead of laboriously doing it via Actinic (I have 1700 products to change), I would try and just change the data base entry but I cant find the table / entry in the data base that holds this information any ideas?

Thanks

[leehack]

The use parent facility means that at any level it looks up a level to see what its parent is using it and it uses that as standard, unless set otherwise. So if you keep moving up the hierarchy to the very top level, set your setting on that, it will cascade down to all levels below where 'use parent' is selected (which it is as standard).

You've been very vague with what it is you are actually doing, but the same rules apply in almost every case. Site options is usually the pinnacle where you set the master setting, well worth studying use parent facility and understanding it for ten minutes, it will literally save hours of work over the lifetime of owning a site.

[losthope]

Thanks Leehack,

The site was created about 3-4 years ago buy someone else who is no longer with us.

We have a link on a multi product list that goes to more information about an individual product, which works ok but the hyper link address (looking in the bottom left of the internet browser) shows an address of mysite/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?PRODREF=TI116&NOLOGIN=1
The problems I have is that when you jump to the individual product page you end up half way down the page (were a name tag is made) and not at the very top and google doesn’t seem to like it. We have some pages that I have changed it to the direct html address and these appear much higher up in the google page listing.

So rather than going into each product and change the ‘use parent()’ setting to the html address via Actinic I wondered if I can do it directly in the Access database (unfortunately I cant seem to find the location of that setting in the database tables.

Really I am after the location of the correct table in the database so I can see if I can change it from there.

Thanks again.

[leehack]

I can't tell you where to go in the table, but i can tell you, you'd not find a professional designer doing it that way, there are far easier ways, if you're interested, read on, if not, stop here.

Google won't be unhappy with the page anchor, i very much doubt that, what it is showing you is that a direct html link is better than a cgi-bin link, this has been commonly known for many years now, smart theme with its cgi-nav was a classic example of this.

A professional designer would either create you a variable (you can do this incredibly easy too with 5 minutes of reading), scope it to site, sections and products and insert the url into the variable. Once applied that variable would then be available to use on a product layout globally (which i presume is what you have it on) or they would hard code a link to that page directly into the product layout, you need to get to one central place to change en mass with these things. Direct in the layout or via variable in a layout will do that for you.

If having the link on every product wasn't something needed, then you'd have an extra step, a yes/no switch on each section/product to set whether you want the link to show or not.

Ultimately that would give you one central place to control the URL, a more efficient database structure and a switch to choose where to use it.

[losthope]

Thanks for pointing me in that direction. Variables will work fine.

I have got it to have a link but i cant find a variable for the actual page address, this is what i have have got so far:
<a href="<actinic:variable name="WebSiteURL" />acatalog/<actinic:variable name="???????????" />">

Does a variable exist for the page address (cant belive there isnt one). Is this what you sugest i make?

Thanks again

[NormanRouxel]

Help / Variable Reference Guide, where there's a Search facility.

[leehack]

Instead of using:

<actinic:variable name="WebSiteURL" />acatalog/

Use:

<actinic:variable name="CatalogURL" />

It will do both for you then and if you ever change the name of the acatalog folder, it will also auto change the URL. Having said that, been as you will already be in the acatalog folder when seeing this link, you can just put the page name in instead i.e. forget the variable completely, it's not needed.

[losthope]

Thanks Leehack,

I will try it on Monday.