Limit number of products on page

[shiver]

Hi,
Limit number of products on page, by adding sub categories with fixed number of products.

I know there's been a number of posts on the subject over time, but none (that I can find) kind of put the subject to bed, plus I was hoping this might have been addressed in Ver7.

This is how I approached the problem (which is a major problem and needs to be sorted).

1. Add a sub-category to the category to be split, name consecutively page 1, page 2 etc

2. I then cut and pasted 9 products (ie 9 products per page) to each of the sub-category sections.

3. Then added the code from page 19 of the AUG to insert links to the previous and next page (sub-category)

So far all's ok. I do however have a couple of questions.

a. The category structure now looks like this:

main cat ie cars

- sub-cat ie 2nd hand cars

- - page split sub-cats

- - - page 1
- - - page 2
- - - page 3
- - - page 4 etc

when ariving at the shops main page (/acatalog/index.html) you have the top level sections ie cars motorbikes etc

clicking on cars takes you to second hand cars and new cars

clicking on second hand cars obviously takes you to the second hand cars page, this shows links to page 1, page 2 etc

This is not what's needed, ideally you should go to page 1
How do I acheive this without upsetting the logical category layout.

b. The section next and previous from AUG page 19 works nicely however I would like to be able to edit the NETQUOTEVAR:PREV_SECTION_NAME and NETQUOTEVAR:PREV_SECTION_NAME where can this be found.

c. I have the section next links displayed in diferent places on diferent pages, where do I change this. Can I show all the sub-sections as links with previous and next?

Sorry for the ramble, hope I'm making sense
Thanks in advance for any help.

[shiver]

Does anybody have any ideas how to solve these issues, I'd be really grateful for any help.

[shiver]

I was thinking of using a text only fragment containing javascript in the subsection page to forward it to the first product page.

(about to ramble)

shop - cars - second hand cars (redirect) - products

ie on the second hand cars page instead of just having the links to page 1, page 2, page 3, etc

use a text fragment with comented html/javascript to auto redirect the page

!!<
<script language="JavaScript"><!--
  window.location.href = 'http://www.domain.com/cgi-bin/ss000003.pl?SECTIONID=secondhandcars%5fpage%5f1%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1';
//--></script>
>!!

is this the correct url format or can I just use '/acatalog/secondhandcars%5fpage%5f1%2ehtml'

Thanks again (if any one replies )

[cdicken]

Hello

You can use either format - although I would suggest if you do the second one, you use a fully-qualified http:// address rather than starting it with '/acatalog'.

What you describe is basically the way I would suggest - create a fragment at the bottom of the page which has a link to the first sub-section in the list.

I was wondering if you could do something clever with the sub-section list itself. Maybe select a section link layout template for the first sub-section in the list which looks something like:

<a href="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK">Next>></a>

and for all the other sub-sections in the list, just use section link layout templates where all the HTML is commented out so nothing of the section link appears in the HTML.

[shiver]

That opens up a whole realm of possibilities, I keep forgetting you can use different templates (ie edited) within the same section.

Will the fully qualified URL without the query string be ok for logged in users, ie retain session? or is there a NETQUOTEVAR I should be using for the redirect link?

Thanks Chris.

[cdicken]

If you use NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK for the link into the first sub-section then this will work fine for logged-in customers.

If you are creating any custom links without using NETQUOTEVARs then you should use the 'query' format that does via the search (ss) script in order to preserve session integrity for logged-in customers.

[shiver]

Thanks I'll do a search in the KB.

[shiver]

Chris, I couldn't find anything in the KB or this forum for the 'query format' could you point me in the right direction please.
Thanks

[cdicken]

Get hold of the latest v7 Advanced User Guide and look at pp 43-44. That's got what you need.

[shiver]

Thanks Chris.

[shiver]

For ref:

Taking People Straight to a Section
If you want to create a link to a section in a store, then use a link of the following form...
http://your.URL/cgi- bin/ss00000x.pl?SECTIONID=Section%5fPage%2ehtml&NOLOGIN=1
Where:
•http://your.URL/cgi-bin is the URL of your CGI-BIN
•ss00000x.pl is the name of your search script with the 'x' replaced with your CGI ID number
•Section%5fPage%2ehtml is the filename of your desired page. Note that you have to encode
any non-alphanumeric characters so an underscore '_' becomes '%5f' and a full stop '.'
becomes '%2e'.
•&NOLOGIN=1 is an essential thing to add to the end of the URL to order to bypass the login
page
Linking from Other URLs
Note: If you are using this code from outside the 'acatalog' folder then you will need to include a
hidden form field of 'ACTINIC_REFERRER=' where the value is your 'Catalog URL' from
'Advanced | Network Setup'. For example:
http://your.URL/cgi- bin/ss00000x.pl?PRODREF=12345&NOLOGIN=1&ACTINIC_REFERRER=http://yo ur.URL/acatalog/
and also
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="ACTINIC_REFERRER" VALUE="http://your.URL/acatalog/">