A section has no products in, can an automated message be shown?

[H.A Innovations]

Hi,

I basically have a section where products will eventually be, however at the minute no products are in this section.
Instead of the boring blank u get in the middle, is it possible to display an automated message, or an image instead?

Many thanks
Barry

[I-CC]

I recall once seeing a message that no sections in this section type of message, only once mind you and could not repeat it, but an option might be to simply add a Fragment to the empty section, with details of what is to come, and then if you have a number of sections like this, then once you have created one with some default (non specific to the section) content, then copy 'n' paste it into the others - which seems the easiest solution to me.

[H.A Innovations]

Ok then. I will give that a go. Thanks alot

[NormanRouxel]

This can be automated quite easily. I'm a bit busy now but I'll post what you need tomorrow.

[pinbrook]

It is very annoying for a customer to drill down to find an empty section. I would use the hide on website tick box and not upload the section at all.

Although if you use the ideas above you could place a coming soon fragment as the text could be read and indexed by search engines thus your page will be ready to go when products are added.

Then again adding a good fragment for SEO is just as time consuming as adding a couple of products

[NormanRouxel]

Here's my idea for displaying such a message.

Displaying a message if no products are in stock

This works by detecting the anchor tags that are attached to products.  
If none are found then an warning message is displayed.
A dummy anchor is attached to the Section Link template so that you don't 
get this warning on a page that only contains a list of child sections.

INSTALLATION


Edit your Child Section template(s) - usually Act_SectionLine.html and just above

NETQUOTEVAR:NEXT

insert the following

<!-- dummy named anchor -->
<a name="adummy"></a>


Edit Act_ProductBody.html and right at the bottom add


<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- display message if no products in section
var NoProducts = true;
var df = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for ( var i=0; i < df.length; i++ ) 
  {
  if ( df[i].name.indexOf('a') == 0 )
    {
    NoProducts = false;
    break;
    }
  }
if ( NoProducts )
  {
  document.write("<b>Sorry but we're temporarily out of stock of these items.</b>");
  }
// -->
</script>

You can add extra document.write lines if you want a longer message. Don't use the double quote ( " ) character in these lines.