Mailing List Archive

2nd Product Table? (Or Not)
Group,

I have a current client with two distinct needs which need to be
accomplished. One is the use of Interchange to facilitate the serving
of Informaion about a catagory of products. The other is the use of
Interchange to facilitate the serving of traditional E-Commerce
needs. In light of these needs what would the heavies of the list
suggest as a way to keep the information served to the visitor for
these two distinct product types seperate.

The differences include such varying items as one features an image
but does not allow for the sale of the product and only provides the
user with information about the product, the other is without an
image and allows for purchase by credit card, check etc. Please note
that approximate number of each is at around 65 for the first
catagory and roughly 2500 for the second so replacing one catagory
with static pages is not an option.

Please point me in a direction that will best suit my needs.

Thanks,

Ross
2nd Product Table? (Or Not) [ In reply to ]
"J. Ross Dishner" <ross@designcc.com> writes:

> The differences include such varying items as one features an image
> but does not allow for the sale of the product and only provides the
> user with information about the product, the other is without an image
> and allows for purchase by credit card, check etc. Please note that
> approximate number of each is at around 65 for the first catagory and
> roughly 2500 for the second so replacing one catagory with static
> pages is not an option.

Put it all in one catalog (and even one product table). You can
specify different flypages for different items and different results
pages for specific scans. Doing this probably means changing the
bar_link subroutine so that the links built for the leftside include
the 'sp' (or mv_search_page). There might be some way to do this with
the UI and not have to modify bar_link. However, as discussed in
another thread I don't really know all the stuff that can be put in
the 'cat' table for various link types.
--
(__) Doug Alcorn (mailto:doug@lathi.net http://www.lathi.net)
oo / PGP 02B3 1E26 BCF2 9AAF 93F1 61D7 450C B264 3E63 D543
|_/ If you're a capitalist and you have the best goods and they're
free, you don't have to proselytize, you just have to wait.
2nd Product Table? (Or Not) [ In reply to ]
> Put it all in one catalog (and even one product table). You can
> specify different flypages for different items and different results
> pages for specific scans. Doing this probably means changing the
> bar_link subroutine so that the links built for the leftside include
> the 'sp' (or mv_search_page). There might be some way to do this with
> the UI and not have to modify bar_link. However, as discussed in
> another thread I don't really know all the stuff that can be put in
> the 'cat' table for various link types.

this can be done by using the 'complex' link type where you can include a
'sp=yourpage'.

The only problem you will have with using one table is that a general
search, say where you ask the user for keywords, may turn up a mixture of
info and sales results.

IMHO I would agree that the single table method is the simplest and I would
go for it, unless your info entries have significantly different fields, or
very large fields which may impact the performance of a sales type search.

Jonathan
Webmaint.