tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46740405217405806772009-06-10T10:15:42.334-07:00Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-4842391348165584042009-01-14T10:34:00.000-08:002009-01-14T10:59:37.849-08:00I keep having to field questions about the product-url field, and since it came up yesterday, I figured I'd try to clear up all the confusion about it.<br /><br />So the name product-url suggests that whatever you type in there will become the URL of that product. Unfortunately, this is not the case, or rather, not in the intuitive way. The URL you enter there will be used as the URL for that product in Yahoo Shopping, on the built-in search results page, and on the shopping cart page, however, the URL you type in there DOES NOT actually change the physical URL of the page.<br /><h2>What is te URL of a page in a Yahoo Store?</h2>In any Yahoo Store built in the store editor, the URL of a page is the store's domain name and the page ID + .html. For example, in my store at www.ytimes.info, I have a page whose id is rtml101, thehrefore, the URL of that page is <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/rtml101.html">http://www.ytimes.info/rtml101.html</a>.<br /><h2>Why would you want to change the URL?</h2>For SEO reasons, it is believed to be better to have a URL that includes keywords. When you simply create a page in the editor, the ID (therefore the page URL) gets generated automatically based on what you type in the "Name" field. This would normally be Ok, however, what the editor does is it sort of munges the words of the Name field together to come up with the id. For example, <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/bookabyahsto.html">Book about yahoo store</a> became bookabyahsto. Well, not particularly useful for SEO....<br /><h2>Can you change the URL then?</h2>The short answer is no. Once a page has been created, it's ID - therefore its URL - is set for good. The only way to "change" it is to delete that page and re-create it with a different ID.<br /><h2>How can you specify the ID for a new page?</h2>There are two ways to do this. If you are using database upload and generally manage your store from a CSV file, you can add a column called ID to your data file, and specify the ID there. Or, if you usually use the editor to create pages, then switch to Advanced Mode, then click "Contents", then "New". There you can specify the ID for your new page.<br /><br />For well established pages (those with good ranking) I would not mess with the URL.<br /><h2>Ok, so what is product-url for then?</h2>When Yahoo Store was transformed int Yahoo Merchant Solutions, one of the ideas was to make it possible to build a yahoo store on the web hosting platform and not in the store editor. Since stores that are built using store-tags on the web hosting platform of yahoo are on a different sub-domain than the store editor pages, there had to be a way to point the built-in search results page, the shopping cart page, or yahoo shopping to those alternate locations. That's where product-url came in. So if your store is built with store tags on the web hosting side, then you can (and should) continue to use product-url to specify your product's location. However, if your store is editor-based, then the best thing to do is to leave product-url blank.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-484239134816558404?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-20242126815710400112008-11-05T14:17:00.001-08:002008-11-05T14:19:56.624-08:00If you are like me, you spend most of your day editing pages in the Yahoo Store editor. And if you do that, you probably spend quite a bit of time navigating to pages and waiting for those pages to load in the editor before being able to edit them. All this waiting really drives me crazy so I kept thinking of ways to speed up my work while working in the editor. One shortcut I always use - if I know thet ID of the page I want to edit - is to erase the last part of the URL while in the editor, and enter the page's Id I want to edit with .html?dired=1 appended to it. For example, if I'm in the editor, and I want to edit the ind.html page, I'd look at the Address field of my browser:<br /><br />http://ytimes.us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net/RT/NEWEDIT.ytimes/d695ff542abb/CD7fAAIJ (just an example)<br /><br />erase CD7fAAIJ and add ind.html?dired=1 to it so it looks like:<br /><br />http://ytimes.us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net/RT/NEWEDIT.ytimes/d695ff542abb/ind.html?dired=1<br /><br />and hit Enter. This will take me to the edit form of the ind.html page - in this example but without loading the page itself. This is all great provided that you know the ID of the page you want to edit. But what if you don't know the ID?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rapid Edit to the rescue!</span><br /><br />I came up with a very useful template that can be installed into any Yahoo Store, and while in the store editor, it will put a red asterisk next to all text hyperlinks. When you click that red asterisk, it will open up the page belonging to that link in the edit form, without actually loading that page first. Imagine going to any section page, and without loading the target page, click this "magic" asterisk next to any link to open up that link in the editor! I only started using this a day or so ago and it already saved me hours of time - time otherwise I would have spent waiting for pages I wanted to edit to load. If you are familiar with Rob Snell's Magic Edit button (described in our <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/yahoo-store-tips-and-tricks.html">Yahoo! Store Tips &amp; Tricks book</a>), this is like the Magic Edit button on steroids.<br /><br />Read more about it at <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/raedforyast.html">Rapid Edit</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-2024212681571040011?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-77408334646297088942008-10-03T14:19:00.000-07:002008-10-03T14:37:18.575-07:00You often hear the phrase "bigger is better". Sometimes it's true but not when it comes to JavaScript or CSS code in your Yahoo! Store pages. If you include JavaScript code or CSS either as linked files (the preferred method) or embedded inside your pages (obviously not preferred), making these files as small as possible should be your goal. Why? This is no rocket science: smaller files mean faster page loads = happy customers.<br /><br />Ok, so what bloats JavaScript code? In general, white space (tabs, carriage returns, non-used spaces), comments, and the actual code, such as variable and function names.<br /><br />You have control over all of these, however, if you don't use white spaces, carriage returns or comments, it will be immensely difficult to understand and modify your code. And not just for others, you too.<br /><br />There are many commercial JavaScript compression tools around, but I've been using this handy and free utility:<a href="http://www.andrewkesper.com/jscrush/"> http://www.andrewkesper.com/jscrush/</a><br /><br />This little utility can take any number of JavaScript files and automatically remove white spaces and comments from those files resulting in files considerably smaller in size than the originals. There are a couple of other advantages of this tool:<br /><br />1. You can use it to compress CSS files as well, not just JavaScript files.<br />2. You can have it combine your source JavaScript files into a single, compressed file.<br /><br />Happy compressing!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-7740833464629708894?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-81721967020626979772008-08-01T14:56:00.000-07:002008-08-01T15:16:40.407-07:00With the July 30, 2008 Store Manager / Editor update a few shortcuts we came to love because useless overnight. For example:<br /><br />- Rob Snell's Magic Edit button no longer works. There is an update on this at the <a href="http://www.yourstoreforums.com/">Yahoo! Store forums</a>.<br /><br />- You cannot just type http://edit.store.yahoo.com/RT/NEWEDIT.yourstoreid into the address bar of the browser and go directly to the editor. Now, it will ALWAYS dump you into the Store Manager first.<br /><br />- You cannot be logged into more than one store simultaneously.<br /><br />The folks at Yahoo Small Business said these changes were necessary to tighten security. Ok, I buy that, and appreciate the fact that they are continuously looking for ways to make our stores more secures. My problem, though, is that I felt these changes seriously limited me in my daily work. Ok, I work with Yahoo Stores for a living, so maybe not everybody has 5-10 different stores open in different tabs all at the same time. But there are merchants who run multiple Yahoo Stores, and they are, too, affected by these changes.<br /><br />So, what can you do?<br /><br />The good news is there are workarounds.<br /><br /><ol><li>If you are using Firefox, check out <a href="http://www.nektra.com/oss/firefox/extensions/cookiepie/">CookiePie</a> from Nektra.com. CookiePie is a Firefox add-on that lets you treat each tab as a completely different "sandbox". This allows you not only to be logged into multiple Yahoo Stores at the same time (like before); it also allows you to log in with different Yahoo! Id's in different tabs! Essentially this add-on turns each browser tab into a world in itself. By far the coolest solution!<br /><br /></li><li>If you don't normally use Firefox you should! Ok, joke's aside, if you are an Internet Explorer fan, you can still open different stores if you start entirely different instances of Internet Explorer and open the different stores in these different instances. The emphasis is on different <span style="font-style: italic;">instance</span>. So you actually have to double-click that IE icon multiple times; selecting New Window or New Tab from the File menu won't do it.<br /><br /></li><li>You can open different stores in different browsers of course. For example, if you have Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari installed on your computer (like I do), you can open completely different stores in each of those browsers.</li></ol>But seriously, give CookiePie for Firefox a try, for me it was a lifesaver!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-8172196702062697977?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-69074074268228828542008-06-05T13:41:00.000-07:002008-06-05T13:50:12.741-07:00The following is an excerpt from my conversation with Cathy Salamone of <a href="http://www.directdigitalphoto.com/">Direct Digital Photography</a>. The use of imagery on any e-commerce web site can have far-reaching consequences. Read what the expert has to say about the subject.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How long have you been doing professional photography?</span><br /><br />- Our Studio Opened in 1980 back then we went by the name "Studio A"- Since hen we have been providing photographic images for Advertising and Industry.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How did you get into digital photography?</span><br /><br />- In 1994 we were approached by a cutting edge printing house offering ua partnership in their newest adventure "Digital Photography". We moved to their facility, changed our name tp "Direct Digital Photography" and entered into a brave new world. Back then no one had ever heard of digital photography-so it was a difficult sale. There were many challenges and being on he cutting edge was a bloody place but we paved the road and got an education about he new technology that very few photographers have the privilege to understand.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Many ecommerce web sites, especially start-up sites try to save money on web design and professional product photography.</span> How important is it really to have professional product shots? Can't we just take any old digital camera and snap a few pictures of our products?<br /><br />- Many new merchants make that costly mistake. Your online site is your business identity, and needs to reflect a professional, secure place for consumers to give personal financial information. The average consumer is accustomed to seeing very expensive advertising campaigns and they CAN see the difference. People starting up and trying to save money will go into a camera store and will be told that if they buy a digital camera system hey will get professional results. Even if they master the camera and computer controls- lighting and composition takes a lifetime to learn and every product needs to be addressed differently-there is no shot cut for experience. The result is many frustrating hours trying to achieve mediocre results and loss of sales resulting in an unsuccessful website and a money thrown away.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is your opinion on using multiple photos to showcase the same product?</span><br /><br />- As a product photography expert 99% of the time one dynamic photo is the best answer. A second photo usually cheapens the product- see examples of other advertising.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Are there differences in how you would photograph different types of merchandise? For instance, is there a difference between photographing clothes and electronic equipment?</span><br /><br />- Huge differences in angles and lighting. This is why it was so difficult to teach my employees- every change of product need a different approach.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How can professional photography increase a store's conversion rate (entice shoppers to buy?)</span><br /><br />- A picture is worth a thousand words. Unlike shopping in a regular store the photograph is going to close the sale-even if they know the product -a poorly lit product just looks unprofessional and questionable to do business with.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Can you share some tips with those who would like to do their own product photography?</span><br /><br />- Buy your equipment from a local store that will give you support when your not achieving the results you expected. Even if online he same equipment is half the price- having someone review unsatisfactory results have a great dollar value.<br /><br /><hr /><br />To contact Cathy, visit <a href="http://www.directdigitalphoto.com/">www.directdigitalphoto.com</a> (and mention Y-Times to receive 10% off your first order.)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-6907407426822882854?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-38529610154763381892008-05-15T12:17:00.001-07:002008-05-15T12:29:54.734-07:00If your store uses images or other files stored in the "Files" library, there is an easy trick to improve the response time of those files - and make your pages load faster.<br /><br />Typically you reference files from the library using this relative URL:<br /><br />/lib/yourstoreid/filename<br /><br />where you replace yourstoreid with the Yahoo account ID of your store. This is generally fine, because the Store is smart enough to expand this to the actual location of the file, which is at<br /><br />http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yourstoreid/filename<br /><br />What I often see in stores is that the store operator enters things like this:<br /><br />http://www.yourdomainname.com/lib/yourstoreid/filename<br /><br />or<br /><br />http://lib.store.yahoo<span style="font-weight: bold;">.com</span>/lib/yourstoreid/filename<br /><br />What's wrong with that? Well, Yahoo! Store is still smart enough to find the correct file for you, but it doesn't come cheap. What happens is that the Yahoo! Store server does a redirect on these URLs so that they reference the file correctly from the <span style="font-weight: bold;">lib.store.yahoo.net</span> server. In a test I've done, these redirects generally took a little over 1,000 milliseconds - or one second. Now imagine if you had 10 or 20 such references in a page? Or inside a css file. It would slow your pages down and completely unnecessarily.<br /><br />This can be even more pronounced on your checkout pages, where everything is served over an already slower SSL connection (yes, SSL is always slower than regular, unsecure HTTP://), and if you have relative URLs such as /lib/yourstoreid/... in your checkout pages, those will always be redirected. The fix is to use the absolute URL https://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yourstoreid/... in your checkout pages, and http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yourstoreid/... on the regular store editor pages. Be sure to do this not only in your HTML source but in all JavaScript and CSS files you use as well.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-3852961015476338189?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-28586501577537862362008-04-11T16:51:00.000-07:002008-04-11T17:00:33.921-07:00You may have noticed that both the Catalog Request and Catalog Request Confirmation pages are now customizable through Checkout Manager. If you have already customized your Checkout Manager pages (or had someone customize them for you), and would like to have the same custom look applied to your Catalog Request and Catalog Request Confirmation forms, all you have to do is this:<br /><br /><ol><li>Go into Checkout Manager, click Page Configuration and then look at how your Shipping, Billing, Review, etc. pages are set up; in particular, check if you have the Top Navigation and Left Navigation enabled.<br /><br /></li><li>Click over to the Catalog Request tab, and make sure you have the same settings next to Top Navigation and Left Navigation. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't forget to hit Save</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold;">Save &amp; Preview</span>, otherwise your changes will be lost.<br /><br /></li><li>Click over to the Catalog Request Confirmation tab and there too, make sure you have the same settings next to Top Navigation and Left Navigation (so if those are enabled on your other checkout pages, enable them here too.) Again, don't forget to hit Save.<br /><br /></li><li>Click Store Manager then publish your order settings.</li></ol><br />If you haven't enabled Checkout Manager or haven't customized your checkout manager pages, then of course this doesn't apply to you. If you are interested in having your checkout migrated to Checkout Manager, or having your Checkout Manager pages customized so all your checkout pages share the same look and feel as the rest of your store, read about our <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/yastchcu.html">Yahoo! Store Checkout Customization</a> service.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-2858650157753786236?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-54783871703723762852008-03-18T13:45:00.000-07:002008-03-18T13:55:14.092-07:00In a recent release, Yahoo! made it possible to show cross-sells right on the product pages. Coupled with their auto-suggest feature (where products are automatically recommended based on past shopping history) this is a great conversion feature. There is, however, a minor bug in the way these on-page cross-sells are implemented. Here is the scoop:<br /><br />As you may know, you can add the yahoo-generated cross-sells to your item pages by inserting &lt;div id="ys_relatedItems"&gt;&lt;/div&gt; anywhere in your pages' text or template. The bug occurs - in Internet Explorer only - if this ys_relatedItems div is the last child of its parent. In that case, and again, only in Internet Explorer, no cross-sell items will show up on the page.<br /><br />In layman's terms, this means that if you have a closing tag after &lt;div id="ys_relatedItems&lt;/div&gt;, then this bug will cause your cross-sells not to show. So, for example, if you have a table and inside it the last element is your ys_relatedItems div, then this would trigger the bug.<br /><br />Yahoo! Engineering is aware of the bug and it will be fixed in the next maintenance release. In the meantime, though, there is a very easy work-around: simply add something after your ys_relatedItems div so that it's not the last child of its parent. An empty div, for example, will do the trick:<br /><br />&lt;div id="ys_relatedItems"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-5478387170372376285?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-78938175030577930902008-03-16T15:47:00.000-07:002008-03-16T16:19:26.732-07:00With a recent feature release, Yahoo! Store finally gave us the option to choose the format in which images are generated on the template-based store editor pages. Previously, unless you displayed an image unaltered (meaning in its original size, and without manipulating it with the RENDER or FUSE operator), the Yahoo! Store editor converted images into GIFs no matter what. What is wrong with that? Well, the GIF format, while small in file size, is best for graphics or clip art, and not for photographic images. The reason lies with the fact that GIF can only display up to 256 colors. With the new release, we can now choose among GIF, JPEG, or PNG.<br /><br />JPEG is generally better for photos, but JPEG uses what is called a "lossy" compression - meaning that in order to reduce file size, the image is compressed by merging like pixels thereby reducing the image quality to varying degrees.<br /><br />PNG is a relatively new format and is generally far superior to both GIF and JPEG. PNG uses "lossless" compression much like GIF, however, unlike GIF, a PNG image supports millions of colors along with transparency (support for transparency is spotty at best in Internet Explorer prior to 7.0. There are workarounds for earlier version of IE, here is one: <a href="http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/alpha.html">http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/alpha.html</a>. )<br /><br />On the Variables page, you will find two variables that deal with image types:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">uploaded-img-default-type</span>: this setting is what controls the images you upload (such as your product images.) Now that we have the option to change this, I routinely set this variable to JPEG. I tried PNG as well, but in all my tests PNG resulted in a larger file than JPEG, and the JPEG version was of good enough quality. You may just have to try it for yourself, and if you find that JPEG doesn't give you as good a quality as PNG, then go with PNG. And while sometimes GIF is ok, because it only supports 256 colors, it will probably hardly ever give you a nice outcome.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">generated-img-default-type</span>: this setting controls the generation of other, non-uploaded images such as buttons and text. Because these images are typically not photographic, GIF is a good choice, and since it is the default, you can leave it unchanged.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Catch...</span><br /><br />Here is something I've discovered through trial and error: while all "regular" variables take effect immediately after changing their values (and hitting Update on the Variables page), these two new variables do not... If you change uploaded-img-default-type from GIF to JPEG for example, you can wait in vain if you expect your product shots to change too... Changing these variables only affect images uploaded AFTER you changed the variables' setting. For any of your existing photos you will have to upload them once again to see them change from GIF to JPEG or PNG. For larger stores this may not be feasible unless you have all your existing images available and named by the ID of the corresponding product. In such a case, you can put all the images into a zip file, click on "Controls" in the store editor, and upload them under "Multiple-Image Upolad".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And Another Catch</span>:<br /><br />If you are using the Version 2 templates and change uploaded-img-default-type to JPEG or PNG, you may notice a gray border by your images on your section pages. This is a minor bug that was introduced by the two new variables. To fix it, you will have to be sure that wherever you use the FUSE or RENDER operator with a margin, you also specify :transparent or white for background. In particular, if in Editor V2, you should edit your copy of the <span style="font-weight: bold;">contents-table</span> template, find the only IMAGE expression in it, and change the background-color attribute of the FUSE operator there from transparent to :transparent (notice the missing colon.)<br /><br />Similarly, in your copy of the <span style="font-weight: bold;">inset-image</span> template, change the same transparent value to :transparent.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-7893817503057793090?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-73590877823991509842007-11-26T18:27:00.000-08:002007-11-26T18:31:21.754-08:00<div style="text-align: left;"> <p>If you are using checkout manager, I'm sure you are aware of today's service interruption at Yahoo! Store. Basically, stores that are using the new Checkout Manager have a major capacity issue where customers either have long waits during checkout, or experience timeouts, error messages or other interruptions. While Yahoo's engineers have been working all day to fix the problem, here is a quick temporary solution you can probably apply to your store, if your store is affected:</p> <ol><li>Log into your Store Manager </li><li>Click on "Checkout Manager" </li><li>Click on "Disable Checkout Manager". </li><li>Read the warning and disable it anyway. </li><li>Back in the "Store Manager", click "Publish" under "Order Settings".</li><li>Go to the store editor, hit "Variables", click "Update" and publish the store.<br /></li></ol> <p>At this point, your store's checkout will be reverted to the "old" checkout, which still works fine. A couple of notes:</p> <ol><li>If your store normally takes an unusually long time to publish, you may not want to do any of this. I have some clients whose stores take over 8 hours to publish. In that case, chances are there will be a solution by the time the publish completes.<br /></li><li>If your store is based on the new Version 3.0 editor, then you cannot disable checkout manager (you will not see a Disable Checkout Manager link inside Checkout Manager.) Unfortunately in this case you will just have to wait until the problem is fixed. </li><li>Because Paypal integration is only available in Checkout Manager, switching back to the "old" checkout will also mean that during that time you won't be able to accept Paypal during checkout. </li><li>CVV verification is also not supported by the old checkout. </li><li>If you are using <a href="http://www.monitus.net/?ref=106">Monitus.net</a>'s Google Analytics Connector, it will also not collect conversion information until the Checkout Manager is fixed and you re-enable it. Monitus's tool only works with Checkout Manager. </li><li>Any customizations you may have had in Checkout Manager <b>will be preserved</b>, so once the problem is fixed, you can go back to Checkout Manager and re-enable it. </li></ol> <p>Istvan Siposs<br />Y-Times</p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-7359087782399150984?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-2009967662940735042007-10-25T17:44:00.000-07:002007-10-25T17:50:50.499-07:00In a typical workday, I deal with dozens of yahoo stores and very often I have to tweak, fix, or change CSS used by these stores. While some stores have very clean and easy to follow style sheets or CSS definitions, the vast majority of stores I've seen seem to include complete hack jobs, style sheets put together completely haphazardly, or as an afterthought. While working in such a store, the idea came to me to turn my gripes into a post. So the following is my list of dos and don'ts of good CSS or style design.<br /><br />1. Externalize your style sheets. This means to save your style sheets into one or more css files, and link to them using the &lt;link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/lib/yourstoreid/yourstyle.css"&gt; notation, or in Editor V3.0, you can use the LINK operator.<br /><br />2. Combine your style sheets into as few files as possible. Nothing worse than trying to wade through 6, 8, 10 or more different style sheets to find the color of a link for example. If you must use multiple style sheets, at least give them meaningful names. Style1.css, style2.css, mystyles.css, etc. are NOT meaningful. Item.css, section.css, home.css ARE meaningful.<br /><br />3. If you are using Editor V3.0, you can put your own CSS stuff in the css-edits.css file. You can find it on the “Contents” page.<br /><br />4. Avoid using inline CSS, that is, putting styling in the style attribute of tags, especially within RTML. Imagine trying to find something like a “style: font-size: 20px” inside one of the store templates if you don't know where it is...<br /><br />5. Use IDs for elements you know you will only have one. For example, chances are you will only have a single left navigation, so give it an ID, not a class. For instance, &lt;div id="navbar"&gt; ... &lt;/div&gt;. Use classes for similar things of which there are more than one on the page.<br /><br />6. Don't repeat classes without a purpose. So many times I've seen navigation links like this:<br /><br />&lt;a class="nav" href="index.html"&gt;Home&lt;/a&gt;<br />&lt;a class="nav" href="info.html"&gt;Info&lt;/a&gt;<br />&lt;a class="nav" href="contents.html"&gt;Contents&lt;/a&gt;<br /><br />Instead, do something like this:<br /><br />&lt;div id="navlinks"&gt;<br />&lt;a href="index.html"&gt;Home&lt;/a&gt;<br />&lt;a href="info.html"&gt;Info&lt;/a&gt;<br />&lt;a href="contents.html"&gt;Contents&lt;/a&gt;<br />&lt;/div&gt;<br /><br />You can now easily define the styles for these links like this:<br /><br />#navlinks a:link, #navlinks a:visited { ... }<br />#navlinks a:hover { ... }<br /><br />7. Start from top to bottom. Define the main styles first, and refine them as you get specific. For example, define your default font like this:<br />body, * { font-family: arial, Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt }<br />Then, as you define your other elements, you won't have to define the font again, only if you needed to override one or more of the global styles (like font-size, for example).<br /><br />8. This is related to the previous point: don't redefine the same styles more than once. If you defined your default font to be Arial, don't define it again for, say the &lt;a&gt; tags. This makes things complicated. Remember, CSS was meant to make life easier.<br /><br />9. Don't use !important, only if you absolutely must. I often see people use !important to fix something, but it's a lazy way of fixing styles. True, if you slap !important on a style definition, it will take precedence over anything else defined for that style up to that point. But once you have your style sheet or style sheets littered with !important lines, trying to fix THAT later can be a nightmare.<br /><br />10. Don't use chained styles with IDs, for example: #main #maintable #navbar. IDs are unique by definition, so it's perfectly enough to just reference the ID by itself. When you chain IDs like in the above example, you are establishing a stronger rule that says, your style should only apply if #navbar is somewhere within #maintable, and #maintable is somewhere within #main.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-200996766294073504?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-85870416251613347642007-09-15T14:57:00.000-07:002007-09-15T15:29:41.837-07:00In my previous post I wrote about how you can reduce the time it takes to publish your Yahoo! Store; and how that trick does nothing for speeding up the editor itself. To make the editor more responsive, the ONCE operator is not the answer. What you need to do - besides of course optimizing your RTML code to make it more efficient - is to identify and turn off slow pieces of your RTML - but do it only in the editor.<br /><br />As I mentioned in the previous post about <a href="http://ytimes.blogspot.com/2007/09/faster-yahoo-store-publish.html">speeding up store publishing</a>, one of the most expensive or slowest pieces of RTML code you can have is a site-wide navigation bar, and especially cascading navigation bars, that not only reference the home page and its contents, but all of their contents as well. It is easy enough to turn off any piece of RTML code by using the WHEN operator. You can, for example, create a custom yes-no variable called "in-editor", and then take your existing site navigation and stuff it inside a WHEN @in-editor operator. This will do the trick, simply set <span style="font-style: italic;">in-editor</span> to Yes while you are working in the editor, and set it to No before publishing.<br /><br />There are two problems with this approach though: one, you have to manually do this all the time you are working in the editor, and two, you or someone at your organization might accidentally publish the store with that setting set to Yes. Then, your live site will end up with no navigation. So what to do?<br /><br />With a little trick, instead of using a custom variable, let the editor tell you whether your code is running in the editor or not! Create the following template:<br /><pre><br />is-editor<br />EQUALS value1 ACTION :show-order<br /> value2 "norder.html"<br /></pre><br />Once you have this template, use it instead of a custom variable to disable pieces of code in the editor like this:<br /><pre><br />WHEN NOT CALL :is-editor<br /> ... code you put here will only be enabled in the live site<br /> ... and disabled inside the editor<br /></pre><span style="font-weight: bold;">But how do I navigate?</span><br /><br />There are many other ways to navigate your store besides using the store's navigation bar. You can use the "Contents" page in the Advanced Editor, or use the footer text links (if you have those), or breadcrumbs. Or, if you know the ID of the page you want to edit, you can erase the last piece (after the last / character) of the address in the browser's address box, and replace it with the page Id plus the .html extension. For example, if you want to go to the site map page, and the address in your editor's address bar looks like this (more or less):<br /><br />http://us-f4-edit.store.yahoo.com/RT/NEWEDIT.<span style="font-style: italic;">storeid</span>/d49f35bb5d6b/<span style="font-weight: bold;">C7FwkAAB</span><br /><br />then replace the bolded part with ind.html and hit Enter like this:<br /><br />http://us-f4-edit.store.yahoo.com/RT/NEWEDIT.<span style="font-style: italic;">storeid</span>/d49f35bb5d6b/<span style="font-weight: bold;">ind.html</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-8587041625161334764?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-81682552973086330082007-09-15T13:06:00.000-07:002007-09-15T13:32:11.734-07:00Recently I did a complete redesign in a store. As part of the redesign, I added a hierarchical, DHTML menu navigation bar to the site. In a typical setup, such a navigation bar works like this: use WITH-OBJECT :index to reference the home page, then cycle through the contents field, create a menu label for each page you find there, and for any such page, create a sub-menu if the page also has contents.<br /><br />If you didn't know until now, whenever you reference another object in RTML, such as using WITH-OBJECT or FOR-EACH-OBJECT, such a reference causes a disk lookup on the server. This is what we call an "expensive" operator; it is expensive in terms of processing power and time, so a navigation bar in general, and a hierarchical navigation bar in particular is an "expensive" template.<br /><br />In the store I was working in, they had over 4,000 pages, and of course, each of those pages had the navigation bar on them. So not surprisingly, the time it took to publish this site went from a couple of minutes to 3-4 hours!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ONCE to the rescue</span><br /><br />There are many ways to write good, efficient, and bad inefficient RTML code, but regarding of your coding style, there is one operator you should consider every time you write a piece of code that won't change from page to page, and it is the <span style="font-style: italic;">ONCE </span>operator.<br /><br />Once takes one parameter, which can be either :page or :publish. What it means is that whatever you paste within ONCE will be evaluated only once per page or per publish. Now, per page is not that interesting (I think at least, I haven't really found any use for that,) but <span style="font-style: italic;">per publish</span> is great.<br /><br />When you use ONCE :publish, the expressions pasted inside it are evaluated only once during publishing. So how can you speed up your navigation bar? The immediate idea is to simply paste your original navigation code inside a ONCE :publish. Ok, try it, and you'll be quite surprised: your navigation bar will appear only on a single page, the first one that was generated during your publish. Not exactly what you want, but if you think about what ONCE does, it does make sense: you asked it to generate your navigation bar once per publish. To get the speed benefits of ONCE :publish and also end up with a navigation bar on every page, do the following small variation:<br /><pre><br />TEXT ONCE :publish<br /> GRAB<br /> ... generate your navigation bar here ...<br /></pre><br />Now this will do the trick nicely! We still generate the navigation bar once per publish, but now the result is saved (GRABbed) and output on each page!<br /><br />With this simple trick, my store's publish time went back to about 5-10 minutes.<br /><br />I use this trick all the time for pieces of the page that doesn't have to change throughout the site. It works nicely for banners, footers, random testimonials, etc. You can use the above code snippet as a boiler plate, just put the code that needs to be evaluated once inside the GRAB operator and you'll be all set. Be careful though, don't do this to code that changes from page to page (for example, you cannot use this trick if your navigation bar changes based on which main category you are in.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Editor still slow?</span><br /><br />Ok, you've tried it, publish time is great, but your editor is slow. Chances are you have some inefficient RTML code in your templates, and if that's the case, ONCE will not save you anything there. Why? Because when you are in the editor, you are essentially publishing each page every time you view a page! Not the entire store (of course), but viewing any page in the editor is a "mini publish" of that page. So if you take my DHTML menu example above, that menu needs to be re-generated in the editor every time you view a page. One way to speed up the editor is to turn off slow pieces of code while in the editor. For example, you can program your template so that it does not show a navigation bar while in the editor (in the editor, you can still navigate in other means, like a bottom of page text navigation, breadcrumbs, or clicking the "Contents" button.) This is, though, a different tip for a different post!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-8168255297308633008?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-17437963392217314692007-07-28T18:53:00.000-07:002007-07-28T21:10:44.790-07:00I seem to get this question a lot: can you use PHP with the Yahoo Store catalog? The short answer is unfortunately now. With <a href=http://www.ytimes.info/yahoo-store-tags-vs-rtml.html>store-tags</a> you can access the catalog, any item and any property of any item from within an HTML page (running on Yahoo's server), but the same is not true for PHP scripts.<br /><br />Store tags are special tags you can embed inside any HTML page of a yahoo store, and those special tags are then replaced by the server with some referenced property of some item in the store catalog. Although store tags were meant to be used in web hosting Yahoo Stores, they actually do work in the Yahoo Store editor as well! You can easily try it out, pick a store tag (see here for store-tag info: <a href=http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/store/tags/>http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/store/tags/</a>) and put it in any text field in the editor.<br /><br />While it would be a powerful feature of Yahoo Store to be able to use store-tags in PHP, because currently it is not supported, you are still have to rely on <a href=http://www.ytimes.info/bookabyahsto.html>RTML</a> and templates if you want to have more control over your store than what store tags and SiteBuilder or DreamWeaver provides.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-1743796339221731469?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-5968198474098336842007-07-28T12:05:00.000-07:002007-07-28T12:08:05.237-07:00Some online merchants consider a nice, professional <a href=http://www.ytimes.info/consultation.html>store design</a> just a gimmick, an unnecessary expense. They say, "if I have a great product people want and I provide good customer service, shoppers will come." This may be true for stores that cater to a narrow niche market with not much competition. But in general, when you have to compete with many other stores in your business, a good design is a must.<br /><br />Recently, a client of mine showed me this actual <a href=http://www.ytimes.info/cure.html>customer review</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Fast, fast shipping, and product delivered as described, I had never heard of this company, but would do business with again. I originally had doubts as the website was not that flashy, but happily I was proven wrong.<br />I would give this company an A+!"</blockquote><br /><br />This sale closed, but how many other visitors to this web site may have turned away, because the web site wasn't "flashy?" And by flashy, he really meant "professional-looking".<br /><br />Today, online shoppers have millions of options, so you as an online merchant have a very narrow window of opportunity to capture a visitor and keep him or her on your store - and hopefully turn them into a customer. If you have what they are looking for at a price they like, it will all come down to trust: does your store make them feel at ease that they can trust you with their business? A professionally designed store answers that question with a resounding "Yes".<br /><br />When starting up an online store, don't consider design secondary. It should be part of your start-up costs, and I would say a fairly large part of it. It is definitely an investment that will eventually have good returns. Start your e-commerce business with a amateurish store thinking you would "upgrade it" once you started making money and getting to the point of making money may take a lot longer than what you may think.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-596819847409833684?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-9166720951786939142007-01-29T20:16:00.000-08:002007-01-30T15:27:49.468-08:00I've been banging my head against the wall with a problem. I've got an ImageReady HTML layout I had to put into a Yahoo Store, and everything was fine in Internet Explorer, but in Firefox, the layout was broken. Images were shifted up and down, left and right.<br /><br />I knew the new Yahoo Store Editor (version 3.0) now forces all the pages to be in <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html#layoutmode">Standards mode</a> , so I had a feeling it had to do with that. Once I was reasonably sure that it wasn't some dumb mistake in the HTML, I started searching for some info on standard doctype, images, tables, and mozilla, and sure enough, I found it <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html#gaps">here</a>.<br /><br />Sure, tables and images are not supposed to be used for layout anymore, but it is still a lot easier in many cases to splice a few pieces of an image together using tables to come up with a specific look. What I didn't know until now was the new standards actually broke the old habits... Not too great if you ask me, I always think that if something is updated it should always support what came before that point...<br /><br />In any case, if you are using the new Version 3 Yahoo Store editor and templates, and want to use tables and images for layout, save yourself some trouble and add the following to your stylesheet:<br /><br />td > img, a > img { display: block }<br /><br />Or, if you also have image type submit buttons in table cells, then:<br /><br />td > img, a > img, td > input[type=image] { display: block }<br /><br />You may have to play with these a bit to get things right depending on your particular layout. For example, I found I had to add this in another store:<br /><br />td > a > img { display: block }<br /><br />After this, my layout worked like a charm. I'll be sure to include it in the next revision of our <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/yahoo-store-tips-and-tricks.html">Yahoo! Store Tips &amp; Tricks</a> book.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-916672095178693914?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-76808779263489898172006-12-26T16:26:00.000-08:002006-12-26T16:40:30.905-08:00Recently a client of mine came to me and said that most of his store pages disappeared from Google, and he did not do anything to make this happen. I was a bit skeptical, so I went to Google, did a search on his store, and sure enough, there were only two pages indexed, his home page and his site map (ind.html) page. The rest were in the supplemental results, which means that Google thought the rest of the pages were not much different than these two pages. When I looked at the supplemental results, the little excerpts under each link were exactly the same, and I also noticed that what Google showed under each result was actually text from the ALT tags of the header image.<br /><p><br />I looked at some of these pages in my client's store, and they were actually different. This was a bit puzzling, but then I thought perhaps Google saw that the header and left navigation was the same throughout the site (which is pretty normal), but that the text that made each page different was too far down inside the HTML. So I made two minor tweaks in the HTML:<br /><p><br />1) I moved the left navigation bar after the page body (this is typically called the "<a href=http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter08.html>Table Hack</a>").<br /><p><br />2) I moved the header below the rest of the page inside the HTML, but using CSS, I visually moved it back to the top.<br /><p><br />So now when looking at the HTML source of any page, I had the actual copy (the text that made each page different) close to the top, and the repeated elements such as the navigation, page header, and footer, were all towards the bottom of the pages.<br /><p><br />I republished the site, waited a couple of days, and sure enough, next time the Google bot came around, all the pages were pulled back from the supplemental results into the regular results.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-7680877926348989817?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-32165305668589820772006-10-28T20:21:00.000-07:002006-10-28T20:27:46.800-07:00Legacy stores have a "Files" button in the Yahoo! Store editor. This can be used to upload files to the store, things like pdf files, images, videos, whatever. It used to be that there was a separate "Files" library for the editor and for the published site - just like there is an editor version of your store and a published version. Well, apparently, there were some internal changes recently, and either this is not the case, or there is something with how Yahoo! Store resolves references to the file library.<br /><br />The issue: if you have a file (say, image.gif) in the file library, and your store has been published, back in the editor if you upload a new version of this existing file with the same name and try to reference it (as /lib/yourstoreid/image.gif, for example), you will see the old, published version, no matter how hard you try. The only solution at this point is to upload the new file and republish the site. After that, you'll see the new version.<br /><br />Obviously, this makes it pretty hard to test things, especially because we often store JavaScript files or other images in the file library, so now the only way to tweak these files is to either use a different name each time (very tedious!) or to publish your site each time you make a change. Well, I have clients whose store takes over 8 hours to publish, so this latter solution may not be too great in their case. But, it seems we are stuck with this until the next maintenance release.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-3216530566858982077?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-21082886831954392882006-10-28T20:05:00.000-07:002006-10-28T20:28:54.856-07:00A client of mine asked me to figure out why her order status page - which contained only a simple HTML form - didn't work on her published site. It was a strange phenomenon, the page she created worked perfectly fine in the editor, but on the published site, all it showed was the word OK. This was really strange, as I couldn't see anything wrong with the HTML itself.<br /><br />Then, I thought, since the form used an outside service to return order status, maybe that service did something to the page. So I took the form out (leaving that order status page basically blank, with only the store header, navigation, and footer on it) and republished. Same thing! Only OK on the published site... Then I looked at the source of that page, and in the source there was nothing else except for OK. Now that was really strange, because in Yahoo! Store you cannot even create a page that does not at least have a regular web page layout like this:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;html></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;head></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;title>No Name&gt;/title></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;/head></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;body></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;/body></span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;">&lt;/html></span><br /><br />Since this page had none of that, I had a thought and plugged in the same URL but within another Yahoo! Store, my own: <a href=http://www.ytimes.info>http://www.ytimes.info</a>/status.html<br /><br />Voila! Same result, that page only showed OK - but I didn't even have a status.html page... So I went back to my client's site, recreated the order status page as order-status.html, published, and all of a sudden everything worked great.<br /><br />Out of curiosity, I tried a few other Yahoo! Stores to see if they also had a status.html page, and as I expected, they all did - and with the same OK and nothing else on it. So I contacted Yahoo! and confirmed:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">status.html is a reserved page in every Yahoo! Store used for server monitoring.</span><br /><br />So my first conclusion was: don't create a page whose ID (url) is status, it won't work on your published site.<br /><br />But better yet, you can turn this into a useful feature: create a status.html page in your store, but use it for internal communication for your company. You can put notes there for your staff, instructions, etc. Whatever you put there will only be visible in the editor, not on the published site.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-2108288683195439288?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-66578385470411269232006-10-06T19:41:00.000-07:002006-10-06T19:44:21.020-07:00You might have heard about LivePerson (www.liveperson.com) the leading provider of online chat that can be integrated into any web site (including any Yahoo Store.) With a service like that, you place a small piece of HTML code on your pages, and a "Live Help" image will appear on your pages. When a visitor has a question, they can simply click that image and initiate a chat with you (or one of your support personnel.) Or, you can initiate a chat from your end by inviting a visitor to chat. It is a great way to provide instant help and answer perhaps that last question that a potential customer might have.<br /><p><br />If you ever considered adding such a feature to your site (or if you haven't), I wanted to show you a similar tool I just found called <a href="http://www.craftysyntax.com/"><b>Crafty Syntax Live Help</b></a>.<br /></p><p><br />Crafty Syntax is a live help solution that allows you to offer live chat functionality to your visitors. And best of all, as opposed to other commercial chat packages, Crafty Syntax is <b>free</b>. That's right, it is an open source package that costs absolutely nothing. The creators leave it up to you to donate something to compensate them for their efforts (and if you end up using this tool, I encourage you to make a donation), but you pay no ongoing fees or setup fees, nothing.<br /></p><p><br />Other commercial chat services typically charge you a monthly fee based on the number of "seats" or concurrent operators you have. Crafty Syntax also has the ability to add multiple operators, multiple departments, and more. Among other things, it allows you to:<br /></p><ul><li>Track your visitors, and see which pages they visited or which page they are currently on</li><li>Track how your visitors came to your site</li><li>Track what keywords or keyphrases brought your visitors to your site</li><li>Create "canned" responses</li><li>Create a knowledge base or Q&amp;A database you can direct your visitors to</li><li>Set up frequently used links you can "push" to your visitors</li></ul>and much more.<br /><p><br />Setting up Crafty Syntax is relatively easy. You need to have a PHP/MySQL-enabled web hosting account (if you have a Merchant Solutions account other than the Starter package, then you are all set.) Simply download the installer from <a href="http://www.craftysyntax.com/installation.php">here</a> then follow the installation instructions <a href="http://www.craftysyntax.com/howto.php">here</a>. If you have are planning to install Crafty on your Merchant Solutions account, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:<br /></p><p><br />1. You have to enable your MySQL database if you haven’t already done so. To do this, follow the instructions at the <a href="http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/webhosting/mysql/mysql-03.html">http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/webhosting/mysql/mysql-03.html</a>.<br /></p><p><br />2. When installing Crafty, it will ask you for the MySQL server name. On Merchant Solutions, this is always <b>mysql</b>.<br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-6657838547041126923?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-34588458795493696942006-08-17T10:21:00.000-07:002006-08-17T10:25:33.028-07:00I've seen this come up many times, especially with people new to Yahoo! Store. They try to use the database upload function to load products into the store, and get a bunch of error messages after the upload complaining about missing fields, invalid characters, etc. The problem most likely is that they are trying to upload the actual Excel (XLS) file, not a CSV file.<br /><br />So before you try to upload your spreadsheet, first make a <span style="font-style: italic;">copy </span>of it as a CSV file. This is one of the file type formats when you select File > Save As in Excel. Then, upload the CSV copy, not the original Excel file.<br /><br />Here is some more info on the <a href="http://www.ytimes.info/yastdaupsaex.html">database upload feature for Yahoo! Store</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-3458845879549369694?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674040521740580677.post-7178700390979036922006-08-15T22:01:00.000-07:002006-08-15T22:22:51.695-07:00I periodically get requests from Y! Store merchants to disable right-clicking on their Yahoo! Store. They typipically want this so that their competitors cannot steal their photos. While disabling right-clicking is easy to do, it's not a very hot idea. Here are a few reasons why:<br /><br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's does not give you 100% protection</span>. Disabling right-clicking is a JavaScript solution, so the easiest way to circumvent it is to disable JavaScript while viewing the page. Disabling JavaScript is very easy to do. In Internet Explorer, you can go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced, and disable "Active Scripting". In Firefox, you can download the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/">Developer Tools extension</a>, and you can disable JavaScript right off the toolbar (there may be other ways, I'm just used to using the Developer Tools extension for this.)<br />Another way is to view source on the page, find the image location, then bring it up in your browser and save the image.<br />Or, look inside your web browser cache. By the very nature of Internet browsing, every page you visit with all of its images and other pieces is downloaded into your computer, and you can find these pieces in your browser cache.<br /><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's limiting</span>. You are disabling a function your visitors may be used to. Many users are used to right-clicking on images and web pages to do certain tasks, such as printing a page or image, navigating back or forward, or in Firefox, for example, to use "<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/39/">Gestures</a>".<br /><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's annoying</span>. You won't realize how much you use right-clicking on a web page until you cannot do it. The right-click context menu's options are typically available through some other means (menus), but often it's quicker to just right-click and shoot.<br /><br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">It's insulting</span>. The vast majority of your visitors won't come to your store or site to steal your images. By reminding them that your images are copyrighted, you assume they are there to copy your images.</li></ol>There are other ways to protect your copyrighted material. To start with, put up a copyright message at the bottom of your pages (you can add this in the "final-text" variable, for example.) The best way to protect your images is to watermark them. This involves a bit of work on your part, but if your images are important to you, this may be worth it. To watermark an image, simply use your favorite image editing sofware and superimpose a light text with your company name on your images. Some image editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop can also embed digital watermarks in images. These are not visible, but can be detected electronically in case you need to take legal action. By the way, Yahoo! takes copyright infringement very seriously. If you have a strong case that someone is infringing on your copyrights, you can report it to Yahoo. If the site stealing your images or contents is a Yahoo! store, Yahoo! in most cases will first notify the other party, then suspend their store until you sort this out with them.<br /><br />If you still want to disable right-clicking on your web site, get a "disable right-click" javascript (<a href="http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/noright.htm">here is one</a>), and put that javascript code inside the "head-tags" variable of your store.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4674040521740580677-717870039097903692?l=ytimes.blogspot.com'/></div>Istvan "RTML 101" Siposshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13014716484549247193noreply@blogger.com0