Generate Navigation
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1771
Printed Date: 27-November-2024 at 2:09pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Generate Navigation
Posted By: cmason
Subject: Generate Navigation
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 12:04am
I'm having a difficult imagining that all admins will remember to go to "Settings/Generate Navigation" after making category changes, or having the tech staff to remember how to that after a global update of categories.
Why not have it auto regenerate after every category add/edit/delete?
For those that have admins using this new approach, are they remembering to go from adding/editing categories to "Settings" then "Generate Navigation"?
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Replies:
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 1:04am
For what is worth: there are thousands of ProductCart users, and this has never come up as an issue. If it is, no one brought it to our attention.
I want it to be very clear that static navigation is a feature, not a flaw. It provides substantial performance improvements, both in the storefront, and in the Control Panel.
The key clearly is the storefront, as recalculating navigation dynamically translates into loads of redundant, unnecessary queries and slows down page loading time.
But the same is true for the Control Panel too. In a store with hundreds or thousands of categories, updating category navigation every time a category is added, edited, or deleted, would translate into additional waiting time after each of those tasks is performed, which can become a real nuisance.
An idea could be to save a flag and show a message somewhere (a reminder). Is this a problem for other users?
massimo
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The ProductCart Team
Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software
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Posted By: cmason
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 5:16am
Static navigation is a great feature, but I urge you to rethink the usability issues. I wouldn't remember to do it and I can project that in an office with multiple admins, with turnover in admins, it's not going to happen.
We currently have 505 categories, we'll probably have 200 more. I just ran the "Generate Navigation" and it was very quick. At a minimum I would suggest that you move it next to the category admin links, even better make "Categories" a first level navigation and put all category related links under it. It's odd that "Shippers" and "Payments" are top level nav when they're rarely edited after setup and categories is stuck in a long list under products.
Another admin menu change that I'd recommend, because it took me an hour to figure out that it's set under "Manage Home Page", is to repeat turning on/off the display of Featured, New Arrivals, and Best Sellers in the "manage" pages for those features under "Marketing".
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 5:55am
ProductCart DOES have dynamic navigation - Or rather - It is available.
But I wouldn't recommend it for that number of categories.
FYI it's in the code snippets section of :
http://www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/support/developers.asp%20 - www.earlyimpact.com/productcart/support/developers.asp
I suspect it would become SOP for anyone managing products in the store and part of their training & documented procedures. If it's something they do all the time it's not a problem.
If getting people to remeber to re-generate it is an issue for your site(s) then add a big bold link on the admin homepage :-)
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Posted By: cmason
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 6:38am
I like the static approach, because it avoids another round trip to the db, but I really urge you to re-consider how it's implemented. The more that people have to "remember" the more errors there'll be.
Putting a note on the page won't work because users don't read. Making them go to another section to run a function just isn't going to happen. Going to another section after an add/edit isn't necessary for any other add/edits so it's out of the normal flow and changing categories isn't a daily task. There's only so much that can be put into a P&P document before it becomes unusable, it's better to have intuitive processes and navigation.
Thanks for the link to the previous dynamic code, I'd already previously looked it over when I found it referenced in a previous discussion and am pondering options. Viewcategories.asp uses the db so it looks like only the site nav links are affected.
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 28-June-2008 at 6:45am
Your correct, it's only the site nav links.
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Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 12:09am
I've forgotten to generate the navigation after updating our site with new categories and products. I by accident went back to the "generate navigation" link about a month later and then realized that my store basically hadn't been up to date. I do not want to go back to dynamic because of its limitation. What I would suggest is to have a message show up when updating the categories or when adding new products. I know that can be annoying, but it would remind me. Perhaps on top of the add category/product page in big letters. "Remember to update navigation once done". Not a pop up, because that would be to annoying. I have to say it is not high on my request list for PC, but it was running in my mind when I updated the navigation. Another option to think of would be a weekly reminder when you log into the back office to perhaps update the navigation.
Katharina
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 4:47am
Hi, to do this automatically would involve changes to quite a few pages in the admin panels and which ones would need to trigger the update would be dependent on which option had been selected for the navigation generation - categories only / top cats & products / all cats & prods. That said, the code could decide, based on the setting, whether to go ahead.
Alternatives.
- Training.
- Mod the Added / Modified pages to have a prominent link & leave it to the admin user to choose.
- Schedule a daily (or whenever) automatic update via a cron style job on the server, or from s pc.
- FAKE the scheduling - Get the first visitor of the day to trigger an automatic update of the navigation. See http://www.asp101.com/articles/john/schedule/default.asp - www.asp101.com/articles/john/schedule/default.asp
Of course, for these last two you would need a customised version of the code that generates the navigation.
Personally I'm quite happy with things as they are & if I made any change it would be one of the first two choices.
http://www.asp101.com/articles/john/schedule/default.asp -
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Posted By: cmason
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 10:44am
Maybe I'm being blind but I don't see that a LOT of pages would have to be changed, just the CRUD category and product pages, although why anyone would include products in their general navigation is a mystery to me. Leave "Generate Navigation" in the "Settings" folder, but make it purely a settings page. Categories is a small table with a small number of fields so adding some code to autogenerate the navigation s/b a small impact. Products table is larger but I'd rather the admins wait another second rather than have inaccurate navigation on the site. Running "Generate Navigation" on my localhost, very slow compared to online server, only takes 2 seconds. I'm generating 505 categories only no products.
Or, how about the CRUD category and product pages regenerate an XML page with all category/product info and then inc_CatsMenu.asp parses it depending on the Generate Navigation settings. That way "Generate Navigation" link would still belong under "Settings" because it is a settings page.
From what I see in header/footer pages there is already a trip to the db to check for Brands, and from a previous post I think some more will be added to check for Featured and Special Products, so for now I'm going with a dynamic generation of categories for use in the navigation area. I'd rather custom code one page for navigation that run around sticking notes on multiple pages or get deeply technical with setting up batch jobs on the server.
The static navigation a really good idea but the implementation needs some tweaking.
Think like a user, how many are even going to notice that quirk in the first place to make sure they add it to their training or custom code? Think about a 1 person shop and that person gets sick or dies, think about multiple admins with turnover. To me I've failed if I have to stick notes all over an interface because what I've developed doesn't run intuitively.
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 1:03pm
Hi,
I can see & understand your points. However, automatic navigation re-generation from the admin may equally not suit some stores. Some sites, for example, will add new categories in advance but hold off putting them live until they are ready - which you can achieve in other ways admittedly- just playing devils advocate.
Personally, if it was changed, I'd rather just be prompted to do the update - with a convenient link to do so.
Also, whether you include products in the navigation completely depends on the type of store.
For example one of out sites is a sandwich shop, with maybe 90 products, most of which can be modified once you have accessed them.
For a daily sandwich convenience and the speed of navigating to the one you want should be kept to the bare minimum - going into a categories page first is another step & slows things down. In fact, for that site we deliberately avoid any links to category pages at our clients request.
As for the training issue, keeping it intuitive is great and makes things easier to manage and understand, but as a general principal I would still never advise anyone just dives with no idea what they are doing or how things "hang together" - that's a recipie for disaster. Anyone, one man shop or 1,000 who just hands over an admin login and says "get on with it" really is asking for trouble. That's true in every field, not just ProductCart. I wouldn't want my house built or my car maintained by someone who had idea of what they were doing and no training and was just trying their best. :-)
Your also right it's the "CRUD" pages - or infact the CUD pages :-) (for those reading this who haven't come across the term CRUD thats Create, Read, Update, Delete). I'm completely guessing, but with the variations I suppose that would be 20-30 files involved.
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Posted By: cmason
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 1:56pm
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I'm glad that I brought the issue forward for discussion but for now I guess we'll just go with custom category code in the navigation, it runs fast enough even on localhost, and not worry about the "Generate Navigation" function. There are other functions to generate site maps so we'll probably be fine in ignoring "Generate Navigation".
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 2:36pm
Hi cmason,
I'm just another user of ProductCart like yourself, but I do know EA keep a keen eye on the forums as well as direct requests for enhancements - and this also impacts on their change/enhancement planning. Obviously they have large numbers of requests competing for their time and attention, so not all of them make it into the product and those that do may take a while. In the meanwhile we have the freedom to implement any enhancement we wish ourselves, which is a great strenth of ProductCart, with the caveat that we are responsible for maintaining them of course.
Discussion is the meat and drink of Forums - I think it's great :-)
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Posted By: cmason
Date Posted: 29-June-2008 at 2:51pm
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I also enjoy discussion because I wonder "is it just me" and sometimes I learn that it is just me and sometimes I learn that others have the issues. With this discussion at least one other user does have the same problem and there's been enough postings so that any one else having the same issue will no that they're not alone.
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