Link to Product Groups

[GrahamL]

Hi,

I'm trying to do something which I thought would be simple, but having no success!

I just want to create product groups (by brand) that I can create a link to - a link that I could just place in standard html.

I've search the forum/KB/manuals but still confused whether my requirement is possible at the moment.

From looking at other posts it seems that a link in the form of...

localhost/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?PG=1&NOLOGIN=1&GROUPONLY=2&TB=A

where GROUPONLY=2 is the product group id from the database, ought to work. But it doesn't! For me it yields "no results".

Another post suggests changing the PG= to the product group id, and leaving the GROUPONLY= to 1 regardless of it's database id #

This nearly works, and gives me one page of correct results, BUT...

Any subsequent pages just go crazy and list all other products (outside the group) and in no apparent order.

It's been posted that a bug exists for linking to product groups of >20. So I guess the question is - if that bug exists - is there no way round it?

All I want to do is link to a 'brand' of products and all these products have a customvar for brand which is searchable, so is there a different way of getting the same results???

Thanks in advance.

Graham

[I-CC]

If you are using Business then the custom property route can achieve this for you.

Create a new custom property called "BRANDS"

Then for each product go into its property, pick the brand from the drop down and enter the brand name into the value area and then select customvar and searchable options.

Then create your html link something like this maybe:

../cgi-bin/ss000001.cgi?RANDOM=NETQUOTEVAR%3ARANDOM&PAGE=SEARCH&SS=&TB=A&PR=-1&S_searchstring1_0=BRANDNAME&GB=A&SX=0&ACTION=Search

Where you replace BRANDNAME with the name that you entered into one of the products BRANDS values...

Recreate the link for each brand name you placed amongst your products.

To include within the search page of actinic go into View | Search Settings and Searchable Properties tab, click the + and select your Brands from within the dropdown, give the text label you want displayed on the search page, choose how you want the options displayed (Radio, check, drop or list) and the options status and if there is a default item to be preselected from your current entries amongst the values in the products custom property values.

Hmmmmmmm. that should cover it I think.

[I-CC]

BTW: this is the method used for the top menu of categorised products within http://www.grampianhealthfoods.com/

[GrahamL]

Thank you for your really fast reply (at a very late hour!!)

You put me on the right tracks, but initially it didn't work. The two changes I needed to make were...

1. I didn't have a 'ss000001.cgi' file so I changed that in the string to 'ss000001.pl'

2. I already had a custom property called BRAND set up and searchable. To get the string to work correctly I had to replace the part of the string that said 'searchstring1' with 'BRAND1'

Now it works a treat

http://venus365.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?RANDOM=NETQUOTEVAR%3ARANDOM&PAGE=SEARCH&SS=&TB=A&PR=-1&S_BRAND1_0=Redken&GB=A&SX=0&ACTION=Search

Where Redken is the brand I want to link to, and BRAND of 'BRAND1' is the custom property I have set up.

Hope this helps others as it's a really useful function to be able to do.

Thanks again for your help.

[I-CC]

Late night yes from the post