Site coming together but need some more input please

[ehong33234]

Hello,

 

Our site is coming along pretty nicely so far, although we still need to add a bunch, especially stuff like the privacy policy, shipping info, etc. I just have some questions about other things and I would like to also get input from all of you. My programmer had to leave the country permanently, so I have to figure some stuff out myself. Thanks in advance for any help and please, constructive criticism only. Links to any recommended (working) contributions also welcome.

 

Site Address: www.fliton.com/catalog/

 

1. There is a white space (about 3px tall) below the header and right above the blue bar (where the cookie crumbs are), that is not supposed to be there. How do I remove this or shift the blue bar up? There is also a small 1px white space on the right side of this blue bar that I want to get rid of.

 

2. On the homepage, after editing the main text, the right column boxes all shifted down. How do I get that back up to the top so it lines up with the left boxes?

 

3. How can I move the "information" box with the privacy info, etc., to the bottom of the site below the date bar? I want it elongated across the bottom, so it reads left to right like this (Shipping & Returns - Privacy Policy - Conditions of Use - Contact Us)

 

4. On the homepage, I want the center box "New Products for November" to say "Featured Product" and show like 3 large thumbnails of featured products that I choose. Is there a contribution for this or an easy way to set this up?

 

5. I noticed my site is not showing up on search engines yet. Do I need to change any settings to allow my text and images to be spidered? Eventually, when the site is done, I want to have this option. I know how it works with regular HTML sites, but just seeing if it is different with php sites.

 

6. On the "contact us" page, I want to add our phone number, mailing address, etc., but when I add the text, it posts everything on the left side of the current box, moving the box over to the right. I want to add text above the box, right below the "contact us" header.

 

I'm sure I will come up with more questions, but any help with the above is greatly appreciated...whether its one thing or all. Thanks.

 

Ed

[shooter-boy]

Ed,

 

I rarely work with osCommerce without installing STS, so I can't help you on the centering, moving, etc., as STS handles this differently, sorry.

 

However;

5. I cannot get to your /catalog from your normal site. Until this is possible, it will not show up in search engines. Also, it does take time! (Especially Google). Your regular site has been indexed by Google (haven't looked at others), so this is probably the issue. There are also a number of ways to improve performance such as installing SEO contributions to help with the URLs, and header tags contributions to manage keywords and stuff. But yeah, make sure your site is properly linked (and can be accessed purely by text also - even if you put the extra links in the footers like most people). But it does take time after all of that, so be patient. Search the forums for the google sandbox (in the tips and tricks forum) too - it might help with some SEO understanding.

 

6. You need to understand how tables work properly. You can open contact_us.php in a WYSIWYG editor and see the table structure. Maybe this will help you.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Rob

[meto]

Cant answer all your questions..

 

1. center shop contribution, voor centering your shop

2. Wolfen feature set. With this you can set featured products etc.

3. The location of the information box is determind by the left_column.php. located in the catalog\includes\

 

Hope this helps

[bill110]

For question 3)

catelog/includes/footer.php

find and modify code to look like this

<table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">
 <tr class="footer">
<td class="footer">  <?php echo strftime(DATE_FORMAT_LONG); ?>  </td>
<td align="right" class="footer">  <?php echo $counter_now . ' ' . FOOTER_TEXT_REQUESTS_SINCE . ' ' . $counter_startdate_formatted; ?>  </td>
 </tr>
</table>
<table width="100%"><tr><? require(DIR_WS_BOXES . 'information.php'); ?></tr></table>

then in catelog/includes/boxes/information.php change the array to look like this

  $info_box_contents = array();
 $info_box_contents[] = array('text' => '<td align="center">'.
									   '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_SHIPPING) . '">' . BOX_INFORMATION_SHIPPING . '</a> || ' .
									 '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_PRIVACY) . '">' . BOX_INFORMATION_PRIVACY . '</a> || ' .
									 '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_CONDITIONS) . '">' . BOX_INFORMATION_CONDITIONS . '</a> || ' .
									 '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_CONTACT_US) . '">' . BOX_INFORMATION_CONTACT . '</a></td>');

then in catelog/includes/column_left.php comment out or delete this line

 require(DIR_WS_BOXES . 'information.php');

[ehong33234]

Rob, which WYSIWYG editor do you use? I did a google search and it came back with a ton of different software. Once we get everything setup, we are linking to our main page...so in due time, it should show up in search engines, gotcha. Thanks!

[ehong33234]

Patrick, I will look around for those contribs.

 

Bill, that is exactly what I was looking for! I am going to give it a shot here momentarily and report back. Thanks a ton!

[ehong33234]

I ran into another problem... the standard OSCommerce banner along the bottom only shows up as a "red X." I originally changed the banner through banner manager to show a custom made banner, but because it was not hosted on a secure site, I always got the "windows warning: some contents on this site may not be secure...blah." So my programmer did something to disable this I think. I tried everything in banner manager to ad new files/banners, still nothing.

 

is there code somewhere that has turned off this feature or that is overwriting my banners?

 

thanks again folks !!

[ehong33234]

deleted

[ehong33234]

Bill,

 

I did your edit and it looks great, that is what I was looking for. One thing I want to do is center the "information" heading but I cant seem to figure out how.

 

I am looking at my catalog/includes/languages/english.php but I am not sure how to change the Box_Heading_Information to center. I could also change the sylesheet, but I don't want to center all of the box headings.

[bill110]

try this

in catelog/includes/boxes/information.php

change the code to look like this at the top

<!-- information //-->
	  <tr>
		<td align="center">
<?php
 $info_box_contents = array();
 $info_box_contents[] = array('text' => BOX_HEADING_INFORMATION );
?></td></tr><tr><td> 
<?php 									

 new infoBoxHeading($info_box_contents, false, false);

[ehong33234]

negative.... did not affect anything as far as I can see.

[ehong33234]

ok, simple fix (i think)... I just removed the word "information" as shown below, which erased the word completely from the infobox header. Do you think this will cause any problems somewhere down the line?

 

catalog/includes/languages/english/english.php (line 123)

 

Before:

// information box text in includes/boxes/information.php

define('BOX_HEADING_INFORMATION', 'Information');

 

Now:

// information box text in includes/boxes/information.php

define('BOX_HEADING_INFORMATION', '');

[bill110]

That should not cause any probs.

here is another try if you want to display the header title

<!-- information //-->
	  <tr>
		<td>
<?php
 $info_box_contents = array();
 $info_box_contents[] = array('text' =>'<table width="100%"><td align="center" class="infoBoxHeading">' . BOX_HEADING_INFORMATION . '</td></table>');

[shooter-boy]

Rob, which WYSIWYG editor do you use? I did a google search and it came back with a ton of different software. Once we get everything setup, we are linking to our main page...so in due time, it should show up in search engines, gotcha. Thanks!

 

Personally I use Dreamweaver, but many people use many things. I develop on Mac, so am a little more restricted to what i have available.

 

Yeah, you will need to link it before it shows up in anything at all. If the spiders can't get to it from your URL, then they will never index it.

 

Rob

[ehong33234]

I use dreamweaver too, but only see code and when I look at design, there isn't much to change. Is there another view or option Rob?

[ehong33234]

Bill, if you say I wont have a problem by omitting "information" as I did above, than it works for me~

 

any idea about the banner question? I just tried to go into footer.php and put the entire url of the banner and still nothing. What it did however, was it popped up the "secure" notice again.

[ehong33234]

ok, I figured out part B of my 1st question. The 1px white pixel on the right of my tr.headernavigation was fixed by doing this to my stylesheet

 

I just changed the width from 800 to 801 and presto, the white space is now gone.

 

}

 

.fixcenter {

width: 801px;

background: #ffffff;

color: #000000;

margin: auto;

margin-top: 0px;

text-align: left;

}

[ehong33234]

ok, figured out part A of my 1st question too... just took a little snooping around. That damn white gap was irritating.

 

My header background was set to white (FFFFFF), which is what the white gap was. A quick solution I though would be to change the header background (which won't show anyways because of my customer header image) to the color of the headerNavigation. That worked too!

 

I just changed my stylesheet section here so the background color matched my headerNavigation color:

 

}

 

TR.header {

background: #3a414d;

align: left;

}

[ehong33234]

bump

[bill110]

In catelog/includes/footer.php the last bit of code calls for the banner\

<?php
 if ($banner = tep_banner_exists('dynamic', '468x50')) {
?>
<br>
<table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
 <tr>
<td align="center"><?php echo tep_display_banner('static', $banner); ?></td>
 </tr>
</table>
<?php
 }
?>

The banner image should be placed in the catelog/images/banners folder unless you are linking the image from another place.

[ehong33234]

thanks bill, I will give that a try.

 

anyone have a good gift card/voucher contribution that works? i know there are a lot out there, but many of them seem buggy....

[ehong33234]

still cant get the banner to show up. now i cant even remove the red X. this sucks.

 

anyone else have any constructive criticism about my site?

[shooter-boy]

Looking good mate, come along since i last saw it.

 

http://fliton.com/catalog/images/creditcards.gif doesn't appear (Max OSX with Safari).

Just just a q' mark in the middle of the page. Is there meant to be something interesting there?

 

There are hard coded links in your top banner. If you put something in your cart then click on contact us or something, then your cart empties. You should use the tep_href_link function for ALL linking, otherwise the session is dropped, and subsequently so are the cart contents.

 

Still no conditions info.

 

Your server stopped working on me just then... will look back later...

 

Rob

[shooter-boy]

OK, so forget that hard coded links comment... i can't get it to do it again... everything stays in cart... hmmm, strange, but a good thing i guess!

 

Rob

[ehong33234]

Hi Rob,

 

Thanks for the feedback again. The center image creditcards.gif is just a test I am trying. I am working on a design to put there, something in relation to specials I am having, etc.

 

Are there any other functions you think I need to add? I just had a guy put up CCGV (Trad) - Coupon Code & Gift Voucher and the authorize.net is working great! I am slowly putting in all of the shipping terms, etc., so should be completed soon....

 

thanks again.