Hi everyone,
As many of you know I have been working on an update to the previous distribution of Price Tapestry (15/01A) to improve support for larger category hierarchies and this is now available for download as 15/09A.
In parallel with the development also included is a new default template "Responsive HTML Plus", an evolution of the current, Foundation based "Responsive HTML" template with incorporation of Foundation's collapsing navigation bar, and specifically for Category Hierarchy support an "AJAX" based, dynamically loaded nested drop down menu for navigation down the hierarchy.
The new template also makes use of Foundation's .breadcrumbs class:
In terms of administration, an option to use Reverse Mapping restricted by merchant is available which makes the process far more manageable - after adding a new merchant you can use the Reverse Mapping tool restricted to that merchant in order to position their feed categories into your hierarchy:
The new distribution is now live on the official demo site:
The Responsive HTML Plus template is also available to download separately for 15/01A.
Upgrading from 15/01A
Backup and Restore
If upgrading a 15/01A installation to 15/09A it is important to use the new Backup and Restore function instead of the version included in earlier distributions. From the 15/09A distribution extract admin/database_tool.php and upload to your 15/01A installation. Use the Tools > Backup and Restore > Backup option to save the .xml backup file to your local computer, and use this with the Restore function in the new installation.Product / Voucher Code Feed Filename Validation
A new config.advanced.php parameter has been added for validation of product and voucher code feed filename input. If previously used values are incompatible with the new validation the restriction can be relaxed by editing config.advanced.php and changing line 94 as follows:$config_filenameRegExp = "/.*/";
Merchant Logo Filename Extension
A new config.advanced.php parameter has been added for use as the filename extension for merchant logos. This defaults to a generic image filename extension of ".img" (as images may be in various formats - web browsers do not rely on the filename for determination of the image format) however for compatibility with existing installations the exact match against merchant name can be restored by editing config.advanced.php and changing line 96 as follows:$config_logoExtension = "";
Enjoy!
Cheers,
David
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi everybody,
I definitely agree with Mark and adding...
5 out of 5 stars both for the script and David's support.
Cheers
Steve
Bob L.
Make sure all those stars are made of gold.
Even if they're not the will be when he touches them.
He defo has that Midas touch when it comes to programming and support.
Great job David.
Thanks for your comments everyone!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
I like it on my desktop, but on my android phone I don't see the category, brand or merchant navigation. Is that by design? If I shrink my desktop browser window down to a small size, the navigation changes but it is still there.
Hello Gregor,
That's interesting - mobile navigation should appear identical to what you see in a browser shrunk to the dimensions that trigger Foundation's small classes (max-width: 40em). The menu bar collapses and displays the "hamburger" icon.
Here are the collapsed and expanded menus as they appear on my Nexus 5 / Chrome:
On your device, is the menu bar just not displayed at all? Can you let me know what device and browser version you are using - for Android / Chrome, if you go to Settings > Apps > Chrome the version is displayed at the top of the page...
Thanks!
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hi David, your screenshots look good. My phone is pretty old and I can't even figure out what browser or version it is (sorry). It is probably just the old browser not supporting some of the new stuff.
It looks good on my daughter's iphone.
Thanks
Hi David,
Great job on drop down menu!!
Thank you
Loving the beta, David. That menu is so helpful especially coupled with the heirachy system.
I was just wondering if you had a voucher page please? I know the previous versions came with one but it seems to have been dropped for the new release. I tend to link to the voucher page so people can easily see all the codes available, as well as showcase the codes at the top of each merchant's page. Is creating a vouchers page easy to do?
Hello bat,
I'll re-instate the front-end vouchers page in the beta, I had discontinued it due to the possible mis-conception that Price Tapestry could be used as a "Voucher Code Script" but a number of people have mentioned this so I'll update the script for the bet and update this thread as soon as it's online later today...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Hello bat,
Front-end voucher code functionality (vouchers.php) has now been re-introduced to the beta.
Associated files:
html/coupons.php (new)
html/default.css (updated to add .pt_co style definitions)
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Smashing, David! You're a star! Thank you.
One other question, regarding the navigation menu but on the phones. I've used the category heirarchy which works wonderfully on desktop. Is there any way to mimic the full heirarchy on the phone version menu as currently it shows Category A-Z, and then you click on that and it shows the parent categories only which contain all the sub category contents together.
Alternatively, is there a way that works as it does at present (Category A-Z > Parent Categories) but then once you click on parent category, another page opens with the sub categories?
Hello bat,
The alternative you suggest is how it should be working - in mobile view the hierarchy can be traversed exactly as per 15/01A, which has a side-benefit of ensuring that search engines will always see a link to /category/ (or categories.php if not using rewrite).
Could you perhaps try the following demo site URL on the same device that you are browsing your own installation where this is not working...
http://www.webpricecheck.co.uk/category/Home-Entertainment/
...and you should see links to the sub-categories "Blu Ray and DVD" and "Televisions". If that all looks OK, if you could let me know the installation URL (I'll remove before publishing your reply) otherwise if you could let me know what device / browser you are using I'll check it out further with you...
Thanks!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Ahhh, just checked your webpricecheck.co.uk on my phone and it's working exactly as you said. How strange mine isn't.
This is my current setup using 15/09A beta
{link saved}
I had to use an old .htaccess from previous versions as the one supplied wouldn't work with neither 15/01 or 15/09 so dunno if that has something to do with it.
Hello Bat,
The new /category/ section of .htaccess is crucial for Category Hierarchy support so if you have a working version from a previous installation, use that as a basis (don't forget to make sure that RewriteBase is set to /new/ as your installation is in a sub-directory) and then replace the 3 lines relating to the category/ rules with the rules from htaccess.txt in the beta distribution;
RewriteRule ^category/$ categories.php [L]
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/$ categories.php?path=$1 [L,B]
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/(.*).html$ search.php?q=category:$1:&page=$2&rewrite=1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L,B]Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Thank you, David. I suspected that was to blame.
I replaced the correct section with the code above, but it was giving my entire site a 500 error. However, I replaced the [L,B] at the end of the two lines of code with just [L] instead and the site now works fine, as does the menu on the phone. Does dropping that B from [L,B] have any bad effect or will it be fine?
Hello bat,
The "B" flag ensures that characters that must be encoded as part of a URL remain encoded after processing by mod_rewrite so I'm not sure why it would be causing a 500 Internal Server Error so I will research that but if you're not using extended characters (e.g. accented vowels etc.) then everything will work perfectly fine without the flag. Thanks for bringing it to my attention...
Cheers,
David.
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PriceTapestry.com
Of course it comes as no surprise to me, but Davids support for his product is amazing.
If you are thinking of making the purchase...do it!