FLEXIBLE PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Add additional field data within the product narrative description. This data will appear on the screen as if it is in a separate field, but is really just part of the narrative memo field. This MIVA Merchant version 2.22, 3.x, 4.x, or 5.x module handles the parsing so that the customer only sees the data in the appropriate places. Currently this module is only available for the OpenUI interface (if using 2.x-4.x Merchant) and requires no module editing. However, a competant mivascript developer could easily modify their mmui.mv to incorporate this module's code in a non-OpenUI store. As an example, this code has been incorporated into the mmui.mv in this Merchant store. In Merchant 5.x the module's tokens are inserted in the page templates that you want to use the module's features.

No modification to the products database structure is required. No additional databases are required to support this additional data. The additional data is added into product records just as any other product data, through admin or via flat file import. This provides easier code maintainability and faster data access. Since the data is stored within the product narrative description field, that data is immediately available to the standard Merchant search function with no code modification. This is the simplest way to display additional data in the product and category screens as if it is in separate fields instead of just narrative data. By doing this, the data stands out as name - value pairs, eg
Author: Hemmingway.

An added benefit is that you can have within your store products with different types of additional field data. Some products might need additional fields such as author, publisher, and date while other products might need fields such as composer, vocalist, and country of origin. This software product is an example of such a situation. Most of the products in my store are movie posters and contain additional fields related to them. That field data is stored in separate fields and maintained via prodmore (module for importing additional field data into separate fields). While this product record contains those same additional fields (naturally they are empty), I have added four fields via Flexible Product Description, which only appear in this product record. You can see them as Merchant Version, User Interface, CIM Tool Kit, Combo in the CTGY and PROD screens. In a Merchant 3.0 and newer store, they can also appear in expanded product display screens for SRCH and PLST.

The 4.x compiled version is compatibile with the OpenUI Tokens and Viking Coders product template module. Place the additional field data on the product page so that they better fit your desired look. Pseudo-fields, brief and keyword, can be used by Static Catalog Generator to improve search engine ranking for both the static html and dynamic MIVA Merchant pages. See the install notes for details.

In Merchant 5.x we've added the ability to display a substring of the product description. This is useful on the category page where you might want to display just the first 200 characters of the description.

Online overview and initial setup instructions for our MIVA Merchant modules.

Screen shot showing admin interface

^Merchant Version:~5.x, 4.x, 3.x and 2.2x ^User Interface:~OpenUI only if version 4.14-4.24 ^OpenUI Tokens:~compiled OpenUI v4.74+ ^CIM Tool Kit:~no ^Combo:~yes ^keyword~flexible product description additional fields pseudo-fields more info data ^brief~Add additional field data within the product narrative description. This data will appear on the screen as if it is in a separate field, but is really just part of the narrative memo field.