Customvar

[Dek]

I have upgraded to Developer from Catalog a long time ago. I created a site with v6, www.thehockeystop.co.uk and had the CUSTOMVAR:TITLE working correctly when it was in catalog. I have since been 'playing' with things for SEO work and have managed to break this. I have followed the instructions again and am still having probs. When I view the source the TITLE tags are there but nothing is between them. If I edit the template and put the NETQUOTEVAR headers in then this is reflected and works but I cant seem to get the CUSTOMVAR to work.

As a test I started a new site and did it from scratch but to no aveil, even with a new clean site the customvar title is not picked up.

Any advice anyone? anything for me to check in case I missed an obvious thing out?

[Dek]

Ahem..........sorted

Sorry if anyone wasted any time on this.

I found the obvious mistake!

The tick box for use as Customvar in the properties was actually off the screen, I just scrolled accross and added the tick.

Sorry

[richardh9999]

Did I understand from your message that you have an easy way of changing the menu title line using customvars ?? If so, I'd be very interested to know how to go about that.

[Bruce]

Hi Richard,

There is a Knowledge base article on this .. http://knowledge.actinic.com/users/k...dmin/acatalog/

This is what it says:

Go to 'Advanced | Custom Properties' and create a new custom property called 'Title'.

Then go to 'Design | Options | Site Defaults' and in the 'Properties' grid click the '+' in the top left hand corner, select 'Title' and in the 'Value' field, enter the default text to appear in the titles of the pages in your store. If you are using Actinic Business or Developer then you need to tick 'Use as CUSTOMVAR'.

Now edit your overall layout template (which you can access via 'Design | Options | Layouts' and replace

NETQUOTEVAR:PAGEHEADER NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE

with

CUSTOMVAR:TITLE

And save your changes.

You can now override this default value for 'Title' on a section by section basis by supplying a value for 'Title' within the 'Properties' tab of a section.

Hope this helps,

Kind regards,

[Dek]

title

The titles of your pages are VERY important.

Without going into much detail there are certain search engines that dont look at META data but use the title and page content to rank your pages.

Keeping the default values for your shop is a massive downer on search engine promotion.

Many little quick and easy things should be done as a bare minimum to help with your placings.

Having every page with exactly the same title is a sure way of low site rankings and positions.

Having the title the same as the default section is also a major no no, you should optimise each page individually.

V7 has better options than v6 and use of customvars to achieve better results is not needed in the same way as with v6.