Announcement

**NormanRouxel** · 05-Dec-2005, 05:12 PM

<Actinic:: ...> tags are usually essential for the correct operation of your store. For example the <Actinic:BASEHREF VALUE="http://www.chinalifeweb.com/acatalog/"/> may not seem to do anything, but is used when the pages get passed through Perl scripts (e.g search results) to allow Actinic to work out the location of your images, scripts, css files, etc. So on normal pages they harmlessly do nothing and on Perl generated pages they get replaced by <BASE HREF=...> tags.

As to your other META questions; they're not doing any harm so why bother tinkering with them.

**Manic** · 05-Dec-2005, 05:56 PM

Thanks Norm...

I understand the BASEREF now so I'll keep that one. I see your point about no harm.... I just dont like having things there that I done understand.

Whats the purpose of the other ones, do you know? Isnt the generator tag just a form of advertising ?

M.

**NormanRouxel** · 05-Dec-2005, 06:03 PM

GENERATOR may be marketing driven. It can be used to count the number of Actinic sites out there. Earlier versions used to add bit of invisible content containing the nonsense string "cdbactag" at the bottom of the page. As invisible text is frowned on by spiders that was replaced with this tag. Thereare still plenty of old sites out there. Try Googling for "cdbactag" and see.

The others may have no operational use. I don't know if they have or not. However, personally, I'd leave them in just in case.

**Spitos** · 17-Sep-2007, 12:53 PM

I've noticed an odd thing about the following line:

<Actinic:BASEHREF VALUE="NETQUOTEVAR:BASEHREF"/>

When this line was placed below the title tag and above the meta description and keywords, my meta tag analyzer was not reading the description or keyword tags properly.
i.e
<TITLE>NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE</TITLE>
<Actinic:BASEHREF VALUE="NETQUOTEVAR:BASEHREF"/>
<META NAME="ACTINICTITLE" CONTENT="Laptops and Spares">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">




<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="actinic.css">

When i moved this line below the meta tags, whilst still keeping it in the head section, all worked fine

i.e
<TITLE>NETQUOTEVAR:PAGETITLE</TITLE>
<META NAME="ACTINICTITLE" CONTENT="Laptops and Spares">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">




<Actinic:BASEHREF VALUE="NETQUOTEVAR:BASEHREF"/>
<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="actinic.css">

I'd like to know if moving this line will make any difference to how actinic works before updating the site?
And, if anyone else has experienced this problem?

Using v7.06

and the meta tag analyzer can be found here:
http://www.hypergurl.com/form.html
Try typing www.laptopsandspares.com into the box and see the results, then view the page source code to see what I mean!

**Mike Hughes** · 17-Sep-2007, 01:09 PM

Search engines ignore stuff they don't understand. Analysers, that are supposed to be intelligent, often fail to work properly with stuff they don't understand.

Personally, I'd ditch the analyser that doesn't work properly rather than play around with the actinic stuff.

Having said that, you might find that moving the actinic tags around doesn't affect the operation of your website.

Mike

**Spitos** · 17-Sep-2007, 01:54 PM

I can understand what you mean about the analyzer, but it has been such an invaluable tool for my SEO over the past few years. By using it as a benchmark I have seen some fantastic results on my sites - but none were actinic.

The actinic tag is still in the head section, so surely it can't have too bad of an effect on things? Can it?

Thanks for the reply Mike

Is there anyone else who can confirm my theory that it will not cease to function with the move of the actinic tag?

**wjcampbe** · 17-Sep-2007, 02:14 PM

Anything that depends on the BASEHREF will not work if that property is not defined before the item that needs it.

When you find any of the <!-- @act items (such as the Privacy Policy link) failing, you will know its because you moved the BASEHREF tag too far.

But will you still remember this when something else fails in three months time? Or will you redo your movement of the tags every time you upgrade your site? Or make the same change in every layout so they all act consistently?

The advice to leave well alone, and not be driven by the inability of an analyser script to speak actinic, is probably the best advice you will get on here.

**Spitos** · 17-Sep-2007, 04:28 PM

Point taken Bill.

Thanks for the advice.

**RuralWeb** · 17-Sep-2007, 04:35 PM

Whats this one for - ACTINICTITLE? How does that help with searchengines

This is vital for SEs

**Spitos** · 17-Sep-2007, 04:44 PM

I realised that I changed the wrong tag there...

Now reads,

<TITLE>Laptops and Spares</TITLE>
<Actinic:BASEHREF VALUE="NETQUOTEVAR:BASEHREF" FORCED=NETQUOTEVAR:BASEHREFFORCED/>
<META NAME="ACTINICTITLE" CONTENT="NETQUOTEVAR:PAGEHEADER">

I can see from the source code that the section name appears here when listed like above

**NormanRouxel** · 17-Sep-2007, 08:27 PM

That <Actinic:BASEHREF ....> is critically important. It does nothing on normal static web-pages. However when these same pages are being sourced from the cgi-bin (search results with highlighting, Business / logged in customers, etc) then the Perl scripts detect and replace it with a <base href="....">tag that allows these cgi sourced pages to correctly locate images, and other files in the acatalog directory.

Relocating it to below the META stuff should be OK but don't put it below any code that refers to files on the server (script, images, css, etc).

**RuralWeb** · 17-Sep-2007, 09:09 PM

Just looking to clean up my headers and optimize for search engines. I figured a good start would be to know what all my tags do.

IMO you would be better starting by trying to get google to index your site as currently it is not. Also you should be using a .co.uk domain rather than a .com as currently you will be disadvantaged in uk serps.

Actinic is good out the box and any minor improvements (waste of time imo) you may make playing with the tags will be defeated by the above points.

**Spitos** · 18-Sep-2007, 07:49 AM

I've already got the point across about the co.uk domain, ruralweb, as well as other issues, hopefully all will change in due time but even if google starts to crawl our pages fully it won't get very far with the state it is currently in.

Just getting a google sitemap in place, changing page titles, adding h1 tags etc and trying whatever I can do improve the messy code left over by the previous developer.
All whilst adding new products on a daily basis and maintaining the site... It's an everyday struggle.

Thanks to everyone for all of your responses

**pinbrook** · 18-Sep-2007, 08:55 AM

hard to convince my boss on many factors at the minute, which is quite frustrating as I have to do things the way he wants, not the way I know will improve the site!

i would engage you energies in learning how to educate your boss, after all he has employed you to improve the site.

Sit him down and show him why your way it better - you are the web professional he is not.

Announcement

NETQUOTEVARS - Meta/Header Vars - All needed?

NETQUOTEVARS - Meta/Header Vars - All needed?

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment