unregistered customers can see prices

[daved]

unregistered customers can see prices if they are taken to a page within the catalog by a search engine request.e.g. google search for product type and then follow the result of the search which is inside the catalog. admittedly, when they move away from that page they are bounced to the login page but for our competitors that want to see our prices for a product the damage has already been done.
i have tried the procedure in the advanced users guide "bouncing unregistered customers out of sections" but this has the effect of bouncing everyone out.

(i am also not sure when it says "Note: replace page.html with whatever page you want unregistered customers to be bounced to", what this refers to. i presume that it is refering to "location.replace ('NoEntry.html')" but when i replace NoEntry.html with index.html it then shows url not recognised.)

i have also tried the procedure to hide the prices from unregistered customers as per the forum thread:-

What you need to do is untick 'Enabled' against the 'Retail' price schedule for every product in the store.

That way when non-logged in customers view the store, they will see a message that says:

Price: This product is only available to registered customers

This message is editable within Prompt 333 in 'Design | Text'. Click the 'Go to' button to find this.
__________________
Cheers

Chris Dicken
Actinic Software

this would be ideal but when i uncheck the enable box for a product, a registered customer will then see the message "This product is not available" instead of the actual price.

i am hoping that this has been a common problem and the answer has already been covered but i cannot find a definitive reply.

www.sandretto.co.uk

thank you

[Duncan Rounding]

You don't have to go to Google to see a cached page to see the prices.

After getting bounced to the login page from any of the online store homepage links you can just replace:
'cgi-bin/ss012345.pl?SECTIONID='
with
'acatalog/'
in the browser address bar and you can browse around.

[platform8]

So what's the answer then?

How can we get a secure business to business website, without the general public getting access to trade prices?

Can Actinic do it or do you need extra code in all the html pages?

Platform 8

[Duncan Rounding]

This is because the product pages are created from the templates etc and the built page then contains the hard coded prices. Actinic doesn't add the price via script on page request. Don't know how you could achieve this better with Actinic.

[Bruce]

You can go to Business Settings | Ordering and select " Request Login on Shop Entry" and uncheck 'Allow orders from unregistered customers' and 'Enable repeated orders from unregistered customers'. Click on apply and update the site. You will now not be able to access the store without logging in.

Kind regards,

[NVL]

...which works until your page links appear in Yahoo.

Add a search file so the bots know what not to search, crawl, spider and generally take from your site.

[daved]

solution found

i have worked out what the problem is!
all my customers are in the retail group.
i have now created a separate customer group called trade and put all the customers in this group.
for each buyer i have selected 'hide retail prices'.
now for each product that i have unchecked the enable box in the price tag for retail, the message 'for registered customers only' appears instead of the price; unless i am logged in in which case i can see the price.

i hope that this helps someone.

one last question; which field in a flat file import do i need to alter to be able to uncheck this box automatically on import?

[Duncan Rounding]

I'm afraid not David. My earlier 'replacement method' above still works - I can still view the prices.

Duncan R

[daved]

Hacker's access to catalogue

Hi Duncan,
now that I have nearly overcome my original issue I can see what you mean.
It sounds like a standard hackers backdoor. I think that you would have to weigh up the risks and whether the casual browser would be able to stumble accross this technique; unless someone else knows different!


P.S. I am still trying to find the field in a flat file import that turns off the enable checkbox for the retail prices. Otherwise whenever I import the catalog data I will have to go through every product and turn this function off. Enyone Know?