Virtuemart Meta Tags and Child Product Creation Huge Problem

[romatvirtue]

Dear Virtuemart,

I was totally happy with your product until I ran into some issues. For me the time is running out, because I have to deliver the product to the customer, but I can't get it to work. The frustration level is at its peak.

My questions here normally do not get answered, so sometimes I wonder if it's even worth posting a question... :
I really hope that this time around I will be luckier.

Can someone please explain why I can't control meta tags as well as browser page title in Joomla menu manager? Currently it's being controlled at Virtuemart category level. Well, what if I need to list 5 different categories in 5 different pages and have a different title and a description for each of the page??

Also, per your documentation, I should be able to create a child product and it looks like the child product should inherit all the information from the parent. The problem is that product itself gets created fine, but nothing is being copied over... In this case what's the point of having this feature? I can just clone products. Or is this a bug?
I am using the latest Virtuemart 2.0.20b AND Joomla 2.5.11.

Could someone help me out with this? Please?


Thank you in advance.

[Milbo]

My questions here normally do not get answered, so sometimes I wonder if it's even worth posting a question... :
I really hope that this time around I will be luckier.

Negative prophecies do usually not help.

Can someone please explain why I can't control meta tags as well as browser page title in Joomla menu manager? Currently it's being controlled at Virtuemart category level. Well, what if I need to list 5 different categories in 5 different pages and have a different title and a description for each of the page??

Usually the people have one menuitem for some categories, therefore we have it in the categories. Imho you must just enter the info in the category and thats it. This has also the advantage, that he meta is connected to the category (which is the reality) and not bound to a GUI.

Also, per your documentation, I should be able to create a child product and it looks like the child product should inherit all the information from the parent. The problem is that product itself gets created fine, but nothing is being copied over...

That is the trick. When you want to copy use clone. Even you do not see the data in the BE, test the FE, there you will see the data, create a child and just change the image, then you will fast understand the idea.

[PRO]

Can someone please explain why I can't control meta tags as well as browser page title in Joomla menu manager? Currently it's being controlled at Virtuemart category level. Well, what if I need to list 5 different categories in 5 different pages and have a different title and a description for each of the page??

romatvirtue,

if you set it in the category, its ALWAYS going to be correct.

IF, you use joomla menu manager for page titles etc. IF the url is missing the itemid (which some modules & plugins do this), then the page title would be different for the same page. Which is not very good for SEO.

[jjk]

Also, per your documentation, I should be able to create a child product and it looks like the child product should inherit all the information from the parent. The problem is that product itself gets created fine, but nothing is being copied over...

An additional note: If you use the JCE editor and click into the product description field of the child product, the JCE default configuration is to automatically add a Div container & Div on Enter "<div>&nbsp;</div>" and therefore is not empty. In this case the description from your parent product is not inherited and you won't see the description of your parent product in the frontend unless you toggle the editor to see the html and delete the "<div>&nbsp;</div>". (I sometimes check this directly in the product description field in my database, because there you can see such cases easily and you can delete those quickly). If you use JCE, you can of course change the default setting to prevent this effect.

[romatvirtue]

My questions here normally do not get answered, so sometimes I wonder if it's even worth posting a question... :
I really hope that this time around I will be luckier.

Negative prophecies do usually not help.

Can someone please explain why I can't control meta tags as well as browser page title in Joomla menu manager? Currently it's being controlled at Virtuemart category level. Well, what if I need to list 5 different categories in 5 different pages and have a different title and a description for each of the page??

Usually the people have one menuitem for some categories, therefore we have it in the categories. Imho you must just enter the info in the category and thats it. This has also the advantage, that he meta is connected to the category (which is the reality) and not bound to a GUI.

Also, per your documentation, I should be able to create a child product and it looks like the child product should inherit all the information from the parent. The problem is that product itself gets created fine, but nothing is being copied over...

That is the trick. When you want to copy use clone. Even you do not see the data in the BE, test the FE, there you will see the data, create a child and just change the image, then you will fast understand the idea.

Hello Milbo, I guess I am lucky on this one. Thank you very much for getting back to me. I see...

That is the trick. When you want to copy use clone. Even you do not see the data in the BE, test the FE, there you will see the data, create a child and just change the image, then you will fast understand the idea.

I got it. To be honest, that's not only tricky, but also confusing. I guess this was designed this way, because there is a direct dependency, correct? I have a question. So is there any way to insert child products and display them separately on different pages? I have another post here where I asked about how to display one product with different descriptions. Say I need to have 5 pages for the same product, but with unique description. How would I do that? It looks like cloning would do the job (but would give me a hard time making updates down the road). So I thought creating child items is a better solution, but I don't know how to extract child items to group them together  in a different category and display as a separate page.

I hope you can give me a hint on this.

Thank you in advance.

[romatvirtue]

Can someone please explain why I can't control meta tags as well as browser page title in Joomla menu manager? Currently it's being controlled at Virtuemart category level. Well, what if I need to list 5 different categories in 5 different pages and have a different title and a description for each of the page??

I appreciate your response. thank you very much.


romatvirtue,

if you set it in the category, its ALWAYS going to be correct.

IF, you use joomla menu manager for page titles etc. IF the url is missing the itemid (which some modules & plugins do this), then the page title would be different for the same page. Which is not very good for SEO.

[romatvirtue]

Also, per your documentation, I should be able to create a child product and it looks like the child product should inherit all the information from the parent. The problem is that product itself gets created fine, but nothing is being copied over...

An additional note: If you use the JCE editor and click into the product description field of the child product, the JCE default configuration is to automatically add a Div container & Div on Enter "<div>&nbsp;</div>" and therefore is not empty. In this case the description from your parent product is not inherited and you won't see the description of your parent product in the frontend unless you toggle the editor to see the html and delete the "<div>&nbsp;</div>". (I sometimes check this directly in the product description field in my database, because there you can see such cases easily and you can delete those quickly). If you use JCE, you can of course change the default setting to prevent this effect.

That's a great tip that I didn't think of and didn't know. I will keep that in mind while modifying the description field.

Thanks so much.