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  StaticStore » StaticStore Manual » Plug-Ins

9. Plug-Ins and Premium Products
           9.1.1 What is premium products and how to add them?
     9.2 The Banner Manager
           9.2.1 How to rotate banners in categories
           9.2.2 How to target banners at content
           9.2.3 Displaying banners with search results
     9.5 The Problem Product Checker
           9.5.1 How to check for broken product pages using the control panel (browser)
           9.5.2 How to check for broken product pages from telnet
           9.5.3 How to manage broken product page reports
     9.6 Data Backups
           9.6.1 How to backup data
           9.6.2 How to restore backed-up data
           9.6.3 How to Configure the Backup Utility
     9.7 Top Search Term Includes
           9.7.1 How it works
           9.7.2 Setting up a Top Search Term Include
           9.7.3 Previewing your Top10 listing
           9.7.4 Getting the JavaScript code to place on your site
           9.7.5 Keeping the lists up to date
     9.8 Popular & New Product Includes
           9.8.1 How it works
           9.8.2 Creating a Popular or New Product Include
           9.8.3 How to list the most popular & most recent products in external pages or templates
           9.8.4 Keeping the Includes up to date
     9.9 Category Includes
           9.9.1 How it works
           9.9.2 Creating a Category Include
           9.9.3 Previewing your Category Include
           9.9.4 Getting the JavaScript code to place on your site:
           9.9.5 Keeping the lists up to date

9.1.1 What is premium products and how to add them?

Premium products are products that is always displayed first before any other product listings in any category. Premium products are also displayed first before any other listings in the Control Panel.
 
You can add premium products by clicking the ‘Add Product’ button when in the Store Manager. When adding a product, assign a value in the ‘Premium Position’ field to make it a premium product. You can give the premium product any value. If you have more than one premium product in the same categories, the premium product values will determine which premium products are displayed first. The premium product with the highest value (number) will be displayed first and the premium product with the second highest value will be displayed second, etc.

You can also change any existing products into premium products, by editing any normal products and assigning Premium Position values to them.

To change a premium product so that it is not a premium product anymore, edit the premium product from the control panel. Then assign a premium value of 0 (zero) to the  product's  ‘Premium Position’ field. After this the premium product will be regarded as a normal product.

The templates used for premium products can be configured in the Template Manager of the Control Panel. This provides the option where premium products can have a different or enhanced look that separates normal products from premium products. All premium products can have an enhanced look that differentiates it from normal products, by customizing the premium product templates.

9.2 The Banner Manager

The Banner Manager enables you to rotate content sensitive banners inside your categories and to rotate banners on any web page or inside any template of StaticStore.

You can rotate banners in your categories by defining/creating banner slots in the category/category template(s). Groups of banners can be assigned to these banner slots from the 'Dir Manager' to specific categories.

To make use of banner rotation when end users do searches, you can make use of banner HTML code that you can place inside your search template. You may get the HTML code for banner groups from the Banner Manager.

9.2.1 How to rotate banners in categories

The instructions below assume that you are using the Default Store HTML Template (defdir.html) in your categories.

To rotate banners in your categories you can do the following.

Step 1
Go to the Template Manager and click on ‘Store Template HTML Code’.

Step 2
Open defdir.html with your web editor or copy and paste the HTML code into your web editor from the popup window that will appear when you click on ‘Store Template HTML Code’.

Step 3
Lets say you have 4 locations in this HTML template where you want to place banners. These 4 locations should each rotate banners. Place the word/variable %%bannerslot1%% in the location where you want the first banner rotated.

Place the word/variable %%bannerslot2%% in the location where you want the second banner rotated.

Place the word/variable %%bannerslot3%% in the location where you want the third banner rotated.

Do the same with the fourth banner you want rotated.

Step 4
Now you have defined banner slots. You may define up to 5 banner slots in the ‘Store Template HTML Code’. Save defdir.html or copy and paste the HTML code from your web editor into the 'template manager' and click the save button.

Step 5
Click the 'Plug-ins' tab and then click 'Banner Manager' to go to the banner manager.

Step 6
In the Banner Manager you can add groups of banners. Each group can contain banners that are to be rotated. Create a group by clicking the ‘Add New Banner Group’ button and then create the banner group.

Step 7
After the banner group has been created, edit the banner group you have just created, by selecting ‘Add/Edit/Delete Banners of Group’ from the drop down box and by pressing the ‘Go’ button.

Step 8
Add all the banners that you would like to be rotated for this group.

Step 9
Now you should have defined banner slots in your ' Store Template HTML Code' (defdir.html) and you should have created a banner group.

Go to the Store Manager and to any category that you would like the banners of the group that you created to be rotated. In the 'Banners' column listed next to each category/category you will see the word/link 'None'. Click on this link and a popup window will appear. The group that you have defined/created will be available for selection for any of the banner slots that you added in the ‘Store Template HTML Code’. (defdir.html) Select the group for the specific banner-slot where you would like the banners rotated.

Step 10
Now you can add more banner groups so that other banners can be rotated in the banner slots that you have defined.

9.2.2 How to target banners at content

To target banners, insert banner slots in the category template(s) that is used for your categories (custom category templates also supported). Once the banner slots are present, go to the 'Dir Manager' and assign groups of banners to be displayed in specific categories.

For example: You can create a banner group called 'Entertainment' and just add entertainment related banners to this group. Lets say you have an entertainment category/category with product listings. Ensure that the template used by the 'Entertainment' category or category has banner slots. From the 'Store' manager choose what groups of banners needs to be displayed in Entertainment.

9.2.3 Displaying banners with search results

You will need to define/create a banner group in the 'Banner Manager'. Add the banners to this group that you would like to be rotated when displaying search results.

After you have banners in the group that you plan on using in search results, get the banner rotation HTML Code. This can be done by selecting the banner group in the Banner Manager, and then by selecting 'Get HTML Code For Use on Other Pages'. After this click the 'Go' button next to the drop down menu.

Insert the HTML code in the 'Search Results Template Plug-in'. Go to the 'Template Manager' and click on 'Main Search Page' (searchres.html) to edit the Search Results template.

9.5 The Problem Product Page Checker

9.5.1 How to check for broken product pages using the control panel (browser - for url's only)

Go to the following location in your control panel:
Control Panel > Plug-Ins > Problem Product Checker

The "broken product checker" checks which products (in your search index) are pointing to nonexistent pages or pages that had problems when loading.

Important note: Do not check for broken product pages in more than one browser window, because the product checker uses files to swap out data. A second instance of the product checker will cause clashes with the files being used.

If you have more than 15 000 products, then it is strongly recommended that you check for broken product pages via telnet/ssh.

9.5.2 How to check for broken product pages from telnet (for url's only)

Telnet or SSH into your host.

From the Telnet/SSH command prompt, type in:
perl linkchecker2.cgi 0
Use this method to check ALL the categories in your store.
OR
perl linkchecker2.cgi 12,13,45,6
If you want to check certain categories only, specify the id's of each of those categories behind the script name (as indicated in the example). You can get category IDs by browsing the Store Manager in the Control Panel. When you move your mouse over a category, the browsers status bar will indicate the ID of the category.

9.5.3 How to manage broken product reports

Problem products pages are reported in the Problem Product Pages Management Utility; which acts as both a reporting and management (edit, delete) utility. See: 8.4 How to manage broken product pages

Also See:
7.1.4 Reporting Problem Product Pages

9.6 Data Backups

9.6.1 How to backup data

Do the following to backup the entire contents of your store search engine.

Step 1: Go to the Control Panel > Plug-Ins > Data Backups

Step 2: Click the 'Backup Database' link.

Step 3: After clicking the 'Backup Database' link, the StaticStore backup script will back up all your database tables. All data in the database StaticStore uses will be exported to your 'data' directory and placed inside a subdirectory called dbbackup. The 'data' directory is explained in the installation instructions of StaticStore.

Step 4: Now transfer the entire contents of the 'data' directory to your hard drive so that you can back it up on a CD or some other suitable medium.

9.6.2 How to restore backed-up data

Note that the restoration of a data backup will put your store (products, templates, settings, etc) back into the state that it was when you made the backup.

To restore a backup do the following:

Step 1: Transfer the contents of the 'data' directory that you backed up previously to your 'data' directory.

Step 2: Assign the permission setting of 777 to all the files that you transferred to your 'data' directory.
 
Step 3: Go to the Control Panel > Plug-Ins > Data Backups

Step 4: Click on the 'Restore Database Backup' link.

9.6.3 How to Configure the Backup Utility

Click on the 'configure' link to configure the backup & restore utility.

mysqldump - (Unix/Linux Only)
mysqldump is a mysql program that dumps the entire contents of a MySQL database to a text file.

MySQL's DATA INFILE AND OUTFILE SQL Syntax
This method involves selecting all data from the StaticStore tables and dumping them to text files.

9.7 Top Search Term Includes

Enables you to display what was 'most searched for' on your Search Engine, by including the 'most searched for' keywords in any external web page or StaticStore template.

9.7.1 How it works

This include works tightly with the Search Term Statistics that displays keyword statistics between a certain time frame. Top Search Term Includes calculate what was 'most searched for' on your Search Engine. You can display the output on any html page by pasting the given JavaScript code after setting up the include.

9.7.2 Setting up a Top Search Term Include

Follow the 'Top Search Term Includes' link on the plug-ins page and click on the 'Add Top Search Term Include' button.

Explanation of the various settings used to set up the include:

Name:  This is just to differentiate between other Search term includes. Choose a name for the include.

Number of Keywords:   Setting this to for example, 10, will have the effect of displaying the 10 most searched for keywords. Thus; 50 will give you the top 50.

Template:  The html here are solely responsible for the look/feel of the Top 10 listing. By default, listings display underneath each other, but can be tweaked/customized to your liking by editing the provided html code.

When done, click the add include button.

9.7.3 Previewing your Top10 listing

Press the preview button of the include we created to allow the include to generate a list (containing searched keywords), sorted from most to least searched & display only the 10 most 'searched for' keywords from that list.

Note that this was just to test/preview the include. To use these results on your site, see 9.7.3.

9.7.4 Getting the JavaScript code to place on your site

The generate/get-JavaScript link serves two functions:

• The include will be created and saved as a JavaScript file inside StaticStore's html directory
• You will be provided with the JavaScript code to place inside your existing web pages or templates of StaticStore.

9.7.5 Keeping the lists up to date

These includes are dependant on the search statistics and will automatically update every time you use the 'Generate HTML Files' link (in the control panel) to update your pages.
You can also, but don't need to, manually regenerate (using the generate link) each JavaScript include, to update the lists.

9.8 Popular & New Product Includes

Popular & New Product Includes enables you to create product pages that contain the most popular and new products for specified categories. You can include these product pages via JavaScript Includes into other existing pages or your StaticStore templates. Popular & New Product Include pages are automatically generated when generating HTML files.

9.8.1 How it works

Let's say for example that you have the following main categories: Entertainment, Business, Health, etc. With Popular & New Product Includes you can list the most popular and recent products from the Entertainment category on any external page or any StaticStore SQL template. The same goes for any other categories, Business, Health, etc. You could also, for example in your StaticStore templates, list the 10 most popular products in your Store.

9.8.2 Creating a Popular or New Product Include

Go to the Control Panel. Then click the 'Plug-Ins' tab. Now click on the 'Popular & New Product Includes' link. Click on the 'Add Product Include' button.

Below is an explanation of what you need to supply to create the include:

Include Name: This is the name of the include. Choose a name.

Include Type:  This indicates if you would like to display the most recent or the most popular products.

Category ID: This is the ID of a category. You can get category IDs when browsing categories in the Store Manager. Category IDs will be displayed in the status bar of your browser when you move your mouse over a category name. The most popular or most recent products will be taken from the category and it's subcategories.

Popularity: This setting is only valid if this include will display popular products. If you are creating an include that lists the most popular products then you can choose by what popularity will be determined by. It could be determined by votes or the number of clicks - of products.

Number of Links: This is the number of most recent or most popular products that will be available in the include.

Product Template: This is the template HTML code that will be used to display the most popular or most recent products. It works in the same manner as the product-style-templates available in the Template Manager. This means that you can customize the product displays in the include and give it any look and feel you have in mind.

9.8.3 How to list the most popular & most recent products in external pages or templates

All includes will be listed in a table when you enter the Popular & New Product Includes section. Click on the  Generate / Get HTML link next to the include to get JavaScript code which you can insert into your StaticStore templates or external pages. Once the JavaScript code has been added to your templates/pages the include will display the most popular or recent products of the category specified for the include.

9.8.4 Keeping the Includes up to date

When you generate HTML files the Popular & New Product Includes are automatically updated.

9.9 Category Includes

Category Includes enables you to create "extra category displays"; You can use it to have, for example, indexes to the left hand side of your pages. Thus creating a sort of Navigation bar:

You can include these link pages via JavaScript Includes with other existing pages or with your StaticStore templates. Category Include pages are automatically generated when you generate your HTML files.

9.9.1 How it works

You can display the output on any html page by pasting the given JavaScript code after setting up the include in 9.8.2.

9.9.2 Creating a Category Include

Go to the Control Panel. Then click the 'Plug-Ins' tab. Now click on the 'Category Includes' link. Click on the 'Add Category Include' button.

Below is an explanation of what you need to supply to create the include:

9.9.3 Previewing your Category Include:

Press the preview link of the include to allow the include to display a category list, similar to that on your main page, but "tweaked" according to the display settings you've set in 9.8.2.

9.9.4 Getting the JavaScript code to place on your site:

The generate/get-html link serves two functions:

• The include will be created and saved as a JavaScript file inside of StaticStore's 'html' directory.
• You will be provided with the JavaScript code to place inside your existing web pages or templates of StaticStore.

9.9.5 Keeping the lists up to date:

You can manually regenerate each JavaScript include to update the lists, by using the generate/get-html link. Note that when you generate your HTML files, the Includes are automatically updated.