Thread: Navigation modifications

Greetings All,

After my recent run of apparently unanswerable questions (here, here, here & here) I thought I'd have another go.....


I have a need to have a subcategory present in multiple parent categories.
e.g. the a subcategory called Blue Widgets needs to be present in the parent categories Blue & Widgets.

Now obviously I could create an identical subcategory in both parent categories, but then we run into duplicate content issues with google. Also - this route means a lot of extra effort involved in mapping.

Any clues about how to make this happen?

I did have an idea about using the extensiondata field of a category to hold a list of subcategories & then modifying the xmlpackage for the category to show subcategories based on that rather than the actual subcategories - I think I could get this to work, but it would break the breadcrumb.


I'd be grateful for any guidance you could offer.



TTFN

BFG

P.S. If you can answer any of the other 4 questions that would be great too

1 post answered. 1 other too vague to even begin to answer. 1 more sent to dev. this post here have no clue what you're trying to do

we don't have duplicate content issues with google. our SEO mod pack addressed that 2 years ago.

Thanks Rob,


I need to have a subcategory present in more than one parent category.
How can I achieve this?


TTFN

BFG

U cannot do what you're trying to do without extensive mods. it's extremely rare for SEO penalty in this area, as presumably, those sub cats would have different products/content mapped to them, so in fact, the url and content ARE different..

Actually, if you think about it, your entire question creates a dup seo conundrum if you think about it.

add the subcats where you need them. map products where you need them. Nav will auto update and do it. SEO penalty concern is nonsense for this item.

If you got both sub cat pages indexed to begin with more power to you (yes, our product will help you do it...and that's good enough). Actually it's quite stunning that our platform just does it for you

PS your other mostly "unanswerable questions" are also addressed. except for 1

Originally Posted by AspDotNetStorefront

U cannot do what you're trying to do without extensive mods.

Fair enough - Thanks !

Originally Posted by AspDotNetStorefront

as presumably, those sub cats would have different products/content mapped to them, so in fact, the url and content ARE different..

Nope - they would be identical - just different ways of navigating through the category structure to the same place.

Originally Posted by AspDotNetStorefront

Actually, if you think about it, your entire question creates a dup seo conundrum if you think about it.

add the subcats where yo need them. map products where you need them. Nav will auto update and do it. SEO penalty concern is nonsense for this item.

If you got both sub cat pages indexed to begin with more power to you (yes, our product will help you do it...and that's good enough). Actually it's quite stunning that our platform just does it for you

I'm not disputing how incredibly powerful ADNSF is - I'm actually quite an evangelist.........
But there are a couple of areas (as with anything) where it could be improved - a way to map cats to multiple parent cats just like we do for products is one of them......


TTFN

BFG

not sure. this surely has to be for an auto-parts (or similar store) LOL this is classic sceanrio for a store doing 100,000 products mapped 14 ways from sunday

you can do it out of the box as above (add cat hierarchies, and map away). SEO dup penalty crap is almost never even a consideration in all practicality. Even if SE picks up one of your product pages, and ignores the other 99 mappings, like you said, it's the "same" product page, so call it good and move on. The breadcrumb is ambiguous in this scenario (impossible to define actually). But that's seldom of real concern. If you need to pick off SE search terms. have at it. pick off the referrer and search terms, and try to reset mapping to the right cat, based on search input. Doable. a few custom mods for sure. but doable.

Further, this is one of those "religious" arguments with no definitive answer. See below:

You really are wanting to do a product iterative attribute based nav yes?

that's not really the same as what you're asking...

There really is no issue with the product pages - they're pretty much perfect.
However - as I keep saying - my question is around subcategories.

I have some top level categories called "Desktop & PC Workstation", "Home & Leisure" & "Meeting Rooms & Workplace".

I need to have the following 2 subcategories appear in all of the above top level categories "Scotch Products" & "Post-it Products". Both of these have identical content & identical products.

At the moment, the only way to achieve this is to have 3 subcategories called "Scotch Products" & 3 called "Post-it Products" - this is the duplicate content issue - identical pages with (slightly) different URLs.


TTFN

BFG

Nothing you are asking for is impossible with mods. Someone would just need to sit down and do them (supporting multiple parent categories). Regarding SEO penalties, I would recommend taking a look at this, as I think it would solve your issue. This could be accomplished using template switching...

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...sentation.html

I did an easy solution for this some time ago using extension data. Kept a comma-delimited list of "additional children" ids in the parent. Then during the xml package used this list in an additional SQL query using the IN clause. That got the additional child records for me. There is probably a better way to do it though.

Yes, there are many ways to approach this, given specific requirements that you are trying to meet.

There is a fairly simple solution to this, although it may not suit everyone's needs. This works well if you have a category of universal/general products with subcategories underneath it which you want to appear in other parts of the site as well without having to map to tons of new categories.

Let's say you have the following category structure:

Computers

->ASUS

->Desktops
->Laptops

->Compaq

->Desktops
->Laptops

->Dell

->Desktops
->Laptops

->eMachines

->Desktops
->Laptops

->HP

->Desktops
->Laptops

->Sony

->Desktops
->Laptops

Add-ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

And you WANT the following category structure in which the Add-ons appear as a subcategory under each Computer category without having to re-map a ton of products.

Computers

->ASUS

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

->Compaq

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

->Dell

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

->eMachines

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

->HP

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

->Sony

->Desktops
->Laptops
->Add-Ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

Add-ons

->Hardware

->Audio Cards
->Cases
->Video Cards

->Peripherals

->Keyboards
->Mice
->Monitors
->Printers

->Software

->Operating Systems
->Security Software
->Website Software

Solution:
This is a JAVASCRIPT solution, so you will need to be running a site on which you don't mind requiring javascript for proper functionality.
1. Create the desired sub category in all of the new places you would like for it to appear.
2. Instead of mapping products to these new categories, LEAVE IT EMPTY!
3. Edit the Description of the category in HTML view adding the following code ONLY. Replace the path in the code with the path of the original cat/subcat that you want the new subcats to link to.

C#/VB.NET Code:

<script>
document.location.href = "/c-9999-add-ons.aspx";
</script> 


You now have what appears to be a subcategory, but is really a redirect to the original Add-ons category. This will avoid SEO duplicate content concerns too. Again, this may not be the ideal solution for everyone, but functionally... it works.

Cool solution...thinking about it a bit. You have to love those auto-parts stores

Every one of them has 150,000 products mapped 17 ways from sunday

LOL that's us.... well not 150,000 products, but trying haha. It is a definitely a unique beast to tackle from what I can tell. Many service providers out there, whether IT, consulting, HR, etc don't even want to try and help auto parts companies because of so many difficulties with it. It sounds like you guys know the trouble it can be too, I am just glad you don't pretend we don't exist lol. ASPDNSF is a great solution and works well for 99% of the needs for our business no doubt.

I am doing this on my site with over 20,000 prods...

Not really an issue, I just land the item in one (default) location.

So the item resides in:

Yellow -> Widgets -> Product location

Blue -> Widgets ->

Green -> Widgets ->

it is just that when they click the last location of the item, the breadcrumb trail will revert back to the one path that I have chosen as the default.

Originally Posted by Upscale_Automotive

Solution:
This is a JAVASCRIPT solution, so you will need to be running a site on which you don't mind requiring javascript for proper functionality.
1. Create the desired sub category in all of the new places you would like for it to appear.
2. Instead of mapping products to these new categories, LEAVE IT EMPTY!
3. Edit the Description of the category in HTML view adding the following code ONLY. Replace the path in the code with the path of the original cat/subcat that you want the new subcats to link to.

C#/VB.NET Code:

<script>
document.location.href = "/c-9999-add-ons.aspx";
</script> 


You now have what appears to be a subcategory, but is really a redirect to the original Add-ons category. This will avoid SEO duplicate content concerns too. Again, this may not be the ideal solution for everyone, but functionally... it works.

Mate, that is awesome - I can't believe it's taken me this long to spot your response - Thanks !!!


Although - bear in mind that google/yahoo/bing are not likely to process the javascript - I'll look at getting an xmlpackage that will do a 301 instead.



TTFN

BFG

Originally Posted by BFG 9000

Mate, that is awesome - I can't believe it's taken me this long to spot your response - Thanks !!!


Although - bear in mind that google/yahoo/bing are not likely to process the javascript - I'll look at getting an xmlpackage that will do a 301 instead.



TTFN

BFG

Any thanks from you means a lot BFG 9000! This is definitely a workaround and not a true solution, but it is a simple and quick one with no code mods required at least. The xmlpackage idea is good. While you are around, can you take a look at http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.co...ad.php?t=17973 and let me know your thoughts? Thanks!

Well, I eventually got around to doing this.
Here's the xmlpackage I created :-

HTML Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="BFG 9000 301 Redirect" allowengine="true" debug="false">

<query name="Redirect" rowElementName="Data" retType="xml">
    <sql>
      <![CDATA[
                SELECT ExtensionData FROM Category WHERE CategoryID = @CategoryID;
            ]]>
    </sql>
        <queryparam paramname="@CategoryID" paramtype="request" requestparamname="CategoryID" sqlDataType="int" defvalue="0" validationpattern="^\d{1,10}$" />
  </query>


    <PackageTransform>
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" xmlns:vb="urn:the-xml-files:xslt-vb" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
<xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />
<msxsl:script language="VB" implements-prefix="vb">
<msxsl:assembly name="System.Web"/>
    Public Function Redirect(url As String)

         System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
         System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Location", url.ToString)
         Return ""
    End Function
</msxsl:script>

        <xsl:template match="/">

<xsl:param name="url">
  <xsl:choose>
    <xsl:when test="/root/Redirect">
      <xsl:value-of select="(/root/Redirect)" />
    </xsl:when>
    <xsl:otherwise>http://www.yoursite.com/</xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
</xsl:param>

<xsl:value-of select="vb:Redirect($url)"/>

        </xsl:template>
        </xsl:stylesheet>
    </PackageTransform>

</package>

Basically, you just assign this xmlpackage to the category & add the url you want to redirect to as the extensiondata.


TTFN

BFG

Do you guys mind sharing the URL to your ASPDNSF sites? I wanna see!

I used your xmlpackage in two situations. One was to redirect duplicate departments to categories with products, and the other was to redirect categories to 3rd party sites.

Thank you BFG 9000

Originally Posted by butcher

I used your xmlpackage in two situations. One was to redirect duplicate departments to categories with products, and the other was to redirect categories to 3rd party sites.

Thank you BFG 9000

Butcher, mind sharing your website url?