featured products not showing

Hi Roland,

Various characters would have been stripped from that product name during import. The easiest way to get the exact name you need for a featured product is to go to the product page itself and then copy the product name from the title on the page. Then, paste that value into the Featured Products list and it should then pick it up on the home page.

Cheers,
David.

Ok, I'll try that.
Thanks.

Roland

Hi David,

it does not work. Featured Products are not showing.

Where are the values for featured products saved? I want to look if they are saved or not.

Roland

Hi Roland,

They're saved in a table called "featured". You would be able to tell if they are being saved or not simply by going back to the Featured Products admin page - they should still be in the list.

Have you been able to get Featured Products working at all on your site? You mentioned that a particular product name was causing them not to display - but is it OK if you leave out that product?

Cheers,
David.

Hello David,
on my other sites where I use PT the featured products are showing, but unless I have changed nothing, they are not showing in that new site.
No. No featured products are displaid, not only paricular products.

Regards

Roland

Hi Roland,

Did you confirm that they are being saved correctly - when you go back to the Featured Products admin page they are all still in the list...?

Yes I saved them correctly and the table "featured " and the database contains them also, but their ID starts with 7 and not with 1
But although I changed the IDs to 1-4 nothing shows up.

The entry in the table looks this way:

ID Name sequence
1 xxxx 1
2 yyyy 2
.........

Regards

Roland

Hi Roland,

You'll need to add some debug code to index.php to find out why nothing is showing. Find this code (starting at line 32 in the distribution):

...and insert the following line immediately after $sqlNames = array();...

If you could post the text that is displayed by that print_r function I'll be able to see what's going on....

Cheers,
David.

Hi David,
the appearing text is:

Array ( [0] => Array ( [id] => 1 [name] => Dolce & Gabbana Chain Scarf-Brown/Purple [sequence] => 1 ) [1] => Array ( [id] => 2 [name] => Armani Cotton Pants-Tan EU46/US Size 12 [sequence] => 2 ) [2] => Array ( [id] => 3 [name] => Pepe Stretch Hip Hugger Bootcut Jean-Blue Shadow [sequence] => 3 ) [3] => Array ( [id] => 4 [name] => Pepe Jeans [sequence] => 4 ) )

Hi Roland,

I think the first 3 of those products are not valid within the Price Tapestry database, and they will have had their product names changed during import by the tapestry_normalise() function.

"Normalising" is the process that makes everything safe to display both within a web page and as part of a URL; so for example the first product:

...is probably in your database as:

(you can imagine what a "/" character would do to a URL...!)

The side effect is occasional bad formatting, but I believe that the benefits (SEO , simplicity etc.) justify the process.

The way to do Featured Products is to navigate to the product first via your search box or merchant / category list, and then copy the exact product name into the Featured Products box. That way, you know that it will be the same name, as all it is doing is searching the products table for products with the names that you enter in the Featured Products box.

The first thing I would do on your system however, is to remove all items except "Pepe Jeans" (which looks safe) and check that it works OK then, and finally follow the process described above to add the other products.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
David.

Ok I'll try.

Roland

Hi David,

it is a name issue. If the name is not correctly spelled or displayed the whole featured.php is not working.

Thanks for your help.

ROland

Hi David,
with one of my merchants feeds I have again the difficulty getting featured products displayed. No matter what I try and although the featured database looks the same as the merchants feed or the original webpage no products are displayed.
The names of the products are the following way:

*Karma Wares (Mini boutique) XLR8R Subscription, Magazines for Unisex

or

Manhattan Portage Expandable Messenger Bag Basic Europa, Bags for Unisex

I now have the question if it would be possible to take another value to tell featured.php to take from the feed.

The product url looks like that:

http://www.xxxxx.com/products.asp?ProductID=1396&VendorCode=CHR&cm_mmc=yyyyyyy-_-n%2fa-_-n%2fa-_-data%20feed

The productID is only displayed in this url not in any place of the feed. Would it be possible to tell featured.php to extract this productID to display selected products?

Regards

Roland

Hi Roland,

The import procedure would have converted:

...into:

Is it still not working with the converted version?

When you are setting up your featured products; where are you taking the product names from?

There are a couple of problems with making it work on the Buy URL. Firstly, it is not indexed, so SELECTing by it from the database would be slow, and also there will be a different Buy URL for each product so you would not get the price comparison without a second query for each product...

Cheers,
David.

Hi David,

It is still not working. The header" Featured Products" is showing, but no products at all.

I take the names directly from the merchants product page.

Price comparison is not really necessary because I only use 1 merchant.

Roland

Hi Roland,

I wouldn't mind taking a look if that's ok because it could indicate a bug in the script - would you be able to email me the link to your site and the username/password for the admin area if you have password protected it...

(reply to your registration code email or go here for the email address)

Cheers,
David.

OK.

Thanks Roland;

Check your email - i've got your featured products showing.

Cheers,
David.