Customizing ProductCart - Truncate Short Description On Category Pages???

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Truncate Short Description On Category Pages???

Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Customizing ProductCart
Forum Description: Exchange messages with other users that are customizing ProductCart.
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4208
Printed Date: 14-July-2025 at 11:25am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Truncate Short Description On Category Pages???

Posted By: tjbones
Subject: Truncate Short Description On Category Pages???
Date Posted: 12-December-2010 at 12:24am

Does anyone know how to truncate the short description on the category pages?

My issue is that the short description on some of my products is long... FYI, I am creating an UL in the short product description, which gets quite long vertically. I want it this way because I want my customers to view this information first when they view the product page. But, I fear this information will be to cumbersome in the product listings.

I do believe I have a work around on this. I can just limit the information I put in the short description (say a limit of 7 <li>) and put an anchor link to the completed information list, that I would put in the general description. But I would prefer to keep all of this information together for a single and complete inital viewing at the top of the page.

I'm hoping for an easy solution to this that I can accomplish by myself w/o paying a web developer, but if this complicated and a web developer should do this, please let me know.

Thanks in advance for your help!!

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tjbones

Replies:

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 12-December-2010 at 12:38am

tjbones - you may want to google "asp string commands" and learn what can be done with such instructions. Perhaps if you dig into viewCategories.asp and locate the sdesc field you can then chop part of it off for display purposes.

However, it's going to be tricky because some may need to be longer, some shorter, and my guess is that you are probably going to be chasing this a bit.

Perhaps another solution is to go to a tabbed product page that allows an alternate use of space on the product detail page - which could possibly allow you to have shorter "short descriptions - and still meet your goals for your customer experience.

http://www.greybearddesign.com/productcart/tabbed-product-page/ - http://www.greybearddesign.com/productcart/tabbed-product-page/

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GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: tjbones
Date Posted: 12-December-2010 at 1:01am

Hi Greg!

You must be a mind reader, because I was just thinking to myself how much I want tabs on my product detail pages! I really appreciate the thought and will seriously consider how this will work to meet my customer user experience.

I like the layout too that you have as an example on your link.

What a great idea that you have such an add-on. If I may ask, do you have it set-up so that future updates of product cart will be compatible with your add-ons? Or do they have to be re-installed after an update?

Your add-ons may be what I need to give my site more of the functionality that I am looking for. I look forward to learning more about your add-ons!!!

Yeah!

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tjbones

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 12-December-2010 at 10:40am

It not only has to be re-installed each time, I frequently have to re-program it for each version of PC that is distributed. This is because it affects the product add/clone/edit scripts, the product import/export scripts, and the product detail pages. There is rarely a new version that comes out that doesn't somehow alter those pages. So yes, it has to be re-installed each time - cannot be avoided.

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GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |

Posted By: tjbones
Date Posted: 13-December-2010 at 1:07am

Got it. I was hoping that I was going to have to rarely alter PC, but the more I start working with it, the more I realize that it's unavoidable. I will make a list of how I alter PC so that when I update it, I'll know everything I did.

Thanks and you'll be seeing my order soon for the add-on.

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tjbones

Posted By: Greg Dinger
Date Posted: 13-December-2010 at 11:52am

As a general practice, we (and most other developers around here) are in the habit of commenting their code alterations. So if we're in a script making edits, we'll normally add a comment at the top of the page stating that the file contains our revisions. Then down in the code where we made the edit, we will include comments referencing the nature of the changes.

Furthermore, it's also a good idea to have a file (such as in the root of the productcart folder) which is a list of every file that was altered - or in the case of canned mods such as the tabbed product page - a list of whose mods are installed.

By following a disciplined practice like this it's going to be a lot easier for you or some developer to assist in upgrading the store. It also helps EI understand what mods are in the store in care you submit a report that something is broken.

-------------
GreyBeard Design Group

Certified ProductCart Developer

Web Design/Development/Hosting

http://tinyurl.com/5c8t4t" rel="nofollow - Add-Ons & Custom Code |