The StatCat module is both an admin module and a basket interface module.
The primary purpose of StatCat is to generate static catalog pages (indexes and
sub-pages) directly from your MIVA Merchant products and category databases so that search engines
will add your pages to their index. Presumably this will allow customers to
find your store amongst the millions of web sites on the Internet. As such,
the pages generated are basic html pages with links to sub-pages,
basket page and individual product pages in your MIVA Merchant system.
Each page contains your store title, meta description, meta keywords, footers along
with the products. Category pages also contain category headers and footers.
If you want to learn more about search engines, review the info pages at
All About Google
.
Although these are static html pages, they have direct links which allow
customers to add the products to their basket which is maintained in your
MIVA Merchant shopping cart system. If you are using the CIM Inventory
Manager or MIVA Corp's new Inventory Manager (in Merchant 4.x), it will
even check the stock level and
return an out of stock message if stock level is depleted.
** Caution: If you are using Merchant 4.0 and its
Inventory Management system that deducts products from
inventory when they are placed in the basket, you should
select to NOT use the Add to Basket buttons if you have
one-of-a-kind items. The reason for this is that some
robots and other indexing software may even follow links
which contain the ? and & characters. This could result
in the stock level decrementing to zero and out-of-stock
emails being sent. The products won't be removed from
inventory completely, as they will be re-stocked when you
run the Admin:Delete Expired Shopping Baskets. This
undesirable situation does not exist in Merchant versions
2.x or 3.x. It is also not a problem in Merchant 4.x if
your store does not use the MIVA Corp Inventory Management
or your product stock levels are not likely to be depleted
with one or two passes of the indexing program.
The store owner determines which page the customer will go to when they select
to add a product to the basket. They can be taken either to the basket for
review or back to the static page they just selected from. Both processes
are automatic and do not require Javascript or meta refresh routines.
Either click through destination can be used on either of the sort options,
store owner choice. In addition to the functionality
of this module, it provides an excellent example of how to interface static
pages with the MIVA Merchant system with return to the correct static page.
Quick links on each sub-page allow the customer to return to the index or
go straight to their basket for review and checkout.
Below the sub-pages the store owner can even generate individual
product pages. These product pages contain the full sized image and description.
If the store uses the Flexible Product Description module and the product
record contains a Keyword field, those product specific keywords are added to the store's
generic keywords which are already in all of the static pages.
The store owner can decide whether to display the price for each item on
the static pages. Since these pages are static and cannot function
interactively to determine customer price groups or discounts, the hide price
routine has its place. However, if the store has no price groups and discounts
are calculated on basket totals or discount coupons, the price listing is useful.
The static pages also have no way to restrict access. So if your store is
one which does not allow certain products to be shown to all customers, then
this module is not for you, unless you can place all of those restricted products in
specific categories. In which case, you could then sort pages by category and
simply delete those categories' pages.
This module is for MIVA Merchant 2.x, 3.x and 4.x. It works with both the
MIVA Merchant look and feel (mmui.mv) and the OpenUI look and feel (oui.mv).
If using the mmui.mv, there are two edits that need to be made to the mmui.mv
file.
StatCat produces pages similar (mirror) to the layout in MIVA Merchant with admin
control. The following configuration settings are made within the standard
MIVA Merchant admin interface: Page title, home URL, optional title/store logo,
title background color, title foreground color, category title header size,
number of product columns on the category sort page, Meta description of the site,
Meta keywords on the site, return action after adding a product to the basket,
option to hide the prices, category column background color,
category column foreground color, category column font,
category column size, product background color in the category sorted pages,
product foreground color in the category sorted pages,
product font and size in the category sorted pages, optional display of
thumbnail images in the category sorted pages, store
front page welcome screen, search button input, product descriptions
on category pages, and page footer.
Once generated, the index pages can be linked to your main
home page. The catalog can be left in the directory it is generated
in or copied to any web site (or multiple web sites) to increase search engine visibility.
The links to images and back to your Merchant.mv store will work across servers.
The limitation to the remote distribution is that these remote static pages
are one way, ie. placing a product in the basket will take the customer to
the main Merchant.mv, but not back to the remote static page. They would then continue
shopping in Merchant.mv. This limitation exists only if the static pages are
not in their original catalog directory. If they are in the catalog directory on
the local server with Merchant.mv, then return to the
static pages is one of your options in admin.
The StatCat also has the ability
to generate static pages which can be placed on a disk and
used as a catalog which can be mailed or given out to potential
customers. When using this option, links to your web site
or the shopping cart are suppressed. It has no links
to the cart and the images are virtual to the static html
pages.
When generating the catalog, the
store owner has the option of restricting the html output to
a list of specific categories. This is particularly useful
when the store owner wants to place their static pages on
remote servers which have specific themes in a mall environment.
Some categories may "fit in" and some may not. This also might
be useful if you want to create disks with only certain categories
of products on them to be given to customers.
Note 1: StatCat uses the first letter of the product name to name the
sub-pages. If you use illegal characters for the first letter of product
names, you will not be able to generate the by-name catalog. An example
would be the left bracket, as some might have put the font tag at the
beginning of the product name. If that is the case, use the by-category
catalog.
Note 2: If you have an excessively large products database, you will
probably not be able to run StatCat on a server without timing out. However,
you should be able to run it in MIVAMia if you have a mirror of your store
on your PC. You would then need to upload the static pages manually. This
store of 600 products took about 5 seconds to generate the category pages.
Several new features have been added to the compiled version; background image,
functional navigation bar, "smart" metatags, extensive implementation of keyword and header and footer
usage, product page names can be product code or name ending with html,
inclusion of product links at the top or bottom listed as featured
products or similar designation, include custom product fields on the
product pages if you are
using MIVA's custom field module, include any fields in the
products database on product pages (including modified structure),
include pseudofields (if using the Flexible Product
Description module) on product pages,
optionally hide subcategories on category pages as applicable, additional
product page links such as "check availability or latest prices",
and export to any directory within the store's
path (creates directory if it does not exist).
Discontinued (inactive) products can continue to have
modified static pages generated so that search engine links
remain viable, yet do not result in errors when linked to
the store. Additionally, affiliate codes can be included
with every link so that the static catalog pages can be given to affiliates who
wish to mirror your catalog at their site. If you are using
the OpenUI, StatCat adds "smart" metatags to your merchant.mvc so that
when the customers (and search engines) click from your
static pages to your actual store, the pages will contain
metatags related to category headers, product descriptions and
product keywords (if used). It also reverses the title tag
with the category and product screens so that the category or
product name appear first, then the store name. If your store
has our Volume Pricing module version (4.53 or higher) installed,
StatCat can optionally include the volume price table on the
static pages. When creating the static product pages, a flat
file is created in the background which can be used for a data
feed file for submission to Froogle
TM
. It contains
the header and data for the basic file format. If you have
.htaccess re-write capability on your domain and have the compiled
version of Static Catalog Generator distributed after April 11, 2004,
you can create directory style links (DSL) from the static pages
back to your merchant.mvc. This allows you to have static pages
with links back to merchant.mvc like you have with our Swap Link
module or the CBS Search Friendly Links module. There is an
onscreen (in admin) example of the .htaccess file. However, you
will need to work with your web host for creating the actual file for
your store. We do not provide support or further instructions on
how to write the .htaccess file and install it on your server.
Online overview
and initial setup instructions for our MIVA Merchant modules.
