Redesign Your Product Pages For WP-E-Commerce.

Update!

If you are experiencing issues in IE7 or 8 – product boxes display in a vertical row instead of side by side it is because div.productdisplay_group is set to [css]height:auto;width:100%;margin:0;padding:0;[/css] Since this is the containing div for the following 2 divs: textcol_group & imagecol_group it is width:100% causing the vertical display.

TRY THIS (Proven Fix):

[css]
/*Group Style*/
/*Feel free to make the boxes shorter or wider or taller.*/
div.productdisplay_group {
float: left;
position: relative;
/*Feel free to make the boxes shorter or wider or taller.*/
width: 205px;
height: 460px;
margin: 0 4px 0 8px;
padding: 10px 4px 0 4px;
}
/*Group Style*/
div.textcol_group {
width:100%;
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
/*Group Style*/
div.imagecol_group {
text-align: center;
display: block;
margin: 5px auto 5px auto;
}
[/css]

I have tested this fix on a user’s site who asked me for help -in IE7 because that is the version I have on my Windows box. If you still see issues after trying this fix on IE8 Please let me know.

Read Original Post:

When the fabulous creators of wp-e-commerce released version 3.7+ they added the template engine to each theme making it possible to style the multiple products page and single products page independently of each other.

This makes it really easy for me and you to write our own styles for the multiple product page while keeping the single product page structure intact.
The Objective: To leave the single products page style intact while restyling the multiple product page.

To follow this tutorial please be using wp-e-commerce version 3.74 or higher. I don’t want to get blamed if you try this on an incompatible version. Thank you.

To follow this tutorial you must have a text editor. I like Crimson Editor (PC) and Textwrangler (MAC) because they show line numbers and have Search capability.

BEFORE YOU START
Please make copies of the files you are going to edit, especially if you have already made changes you quite like. If something goes very wrong you can then delete the problem files and re load the intact ones and we can all walk away from this a little sadder but perhaps a bit wiser.

Files we will be editing:
Your_theme.css (either marketplace.css, iShop.css or default.css)
Products_page.php

Open products_page.php.

Search for productdisplay
Rename to productdisplay_group

Search for textcol
Rename to textcol_group

Search for imagecol
Rename to imagecol_group

Save and re upload with ftp. Or use your filemanager in your cpanel..

Let’s start writing our own styles.
Open either default.css, iShop.css or marketplace.css. Find @ line 209
(assuming you have not edited before and the line #’s are still intact)

Find div.productdisplay {} Copy & Paste & rename to div.productdisplay_group {}
Find div.imagecol{} Copy & Paste & rename to div.imagecol_group{}
Find div.textcol{} Copy & Paste & rename to div.textcol_group{}

Remember the idea is to add more classes not to delete existing ones. We don’t want to wreck the single product page style.
Also we aren’t deleting the style rules in between the brackets,either. I just didn’t feel like copying it all here.

Your style sheet should now have :
div.productdisplay{}

/*Group Style*/
div.productdisplay_group {}

div.textcol{}

/*Group Style*/
div.textcol_group{}

div.imagecol{}

/*Group Style*/
div.imagecol_group{}

A very basic design:
[css]
/*Group Style*/
div.productdisplay_group {
height:auto;width:100%;margin:0;padding:0;
}

/*Feel free to make the boxes shorter or wider or taller.*/
/*Group Style*/
div.textcol_group {
float: left;
position: relative;
/*Feel free to make the boxes shorter or wider or taller.*/
width: 205px;
height: 460px;
margin: 0 4px 0 8px;
padding: 10px 4px 0 4px;
}

/*Group Style*/
div.imagecol_group {
text-align: center;
display: block;
margin: 5px auto 5px auto;
}
[/css]
Save. Re upload with ftp. Or use your filemanager in your cpanel.
Now look at your shop page. (Refresh the page.) A lot of corrective tweaks can be made by making textcol_group wider, shorter, taller or narrower.

Continue reading Redesign Your Product Pages For WP-E-Commerce.

WP SEO PLUGINS – WP-E-Commerce – Unique Page Titles

worrying-about-seo

There’s been a lot of fuss over plugins for SEO – of course many people love All In One SEO Pack, that is not news. But there are lots of other plugins that say they do what AIOSEOP does and better. Is this true? Try them out for yourself. You might like one better than another. One may do what you want better.

I don’t dis or back a plugin that I have not tried merely out of some sense of loyalty to someone I don’t know and have never even seen in person. I am unaffiliated financially with any other group or service. When I endorse a plugin it means I have tried it and it’s competitors out and the one I endorse does what I need it to do.

With all the hubbledy-doo and the hoo-ha churned out about about Google and Page Rank sculpting and being suspected of being a freaky spammer (bad) you might get the feeling that any minute you could be penalized for doing something wrong when you didn’t know it was wrong. I say please calm down. If you are not spamming,scraping or other bad things and are maintaining and updating your site with your own content in a timely, informative, natural and kindly manner, you don’t need to freak out. Google and other search engines might be a set of ever changing algorithms but behind those algorithms are real people.

See, it isn’t just how much cleverer you are than your competitor it is really about your content, how much of it there is, how often you make new content and how many people search for and find your content. Yeah, you can make mistakes and ruin your breakout links and etc. But you can recover from mistakes, too.

The bottom line is SEO used properly is for helping you and your content get the audience you deserve.

Headspace2
In my opinion Headspace2 is possibly a bit too much for the layperson to handle. It slowed down my test site to a crawl.
It took over and did not let me deactivate unactivated plugins that were already deactivated. Make sense? Nope.
It made me do crazy stuff like try to use an unactivated plugin on certain pages or posts. It made me think I could rule the world.
It did not produce UNIQUE TITLE TAGS ON SINGLE WP-E-COMMERCE PRODUCT PAGES!
In fact because of its taking over and causing a ruckus I had to start over with a fresh install.
My advice: take a few days to try this plugin out on a test site. Get to know it.
I don’t think a noobie should install it on a production site and you should never install this plugin without backing up your database.

Platinum SEO Pack
Ok, nice, but It did not produce UNIQUE TITLE TAGS ON SINGLE WP-E-COMMERCE PRODUCT PAGES!
gar.

All In One SEO Pack
Lately it has been slightly inconsistent. The newest versions do not produce unique page titles for the single product pages in wp-e-commerce.
The last known stable version that did is (warning, this is a download link:1.6.4.1)

stop-worrying-about-seo

The long and the short of it: there are a lot of SEO plugins for WordPress. Some are good and some are ok. Some are just copies of others. But only one delivers unique page titles for wp-e-commerce single product pages. And the newest news is you no longer have to edit your header.php to replace the title tag code. Whatever you’ve got will be rewritten by AIOSEOP, anyway.

Update!

I am not saying anything bad about AIOSEOP! I am saying it is the best WP SEO PLUGIN available.
There. Now that can’t be misunderstood. I hope.

No More Support For Fake Grid View For WP-E-Commerce!

grid view is a cruel mistressGuys, its been fun but WP-E-Commerce 3.7+ is just so different from 3.6 and the file I used to be able to hack to fake Grid View has been made kinda obsolete in 3.7. So unless you are willing to seriously hack your shop theme’s template files ( I know, it is so much fun! ) and learn how to float boxes with handydandy CSS, you should just buy the Gold Cart from Instinct. It’s a mere 40.00 dollars and a whole lot less headache (plus a lot cheaper than hiring me to do it for you, which I should not say). But the main thing is the shopping cart plugin is evolving and getting better with each release and I would never encourage anybody to stick with an older version just to keep a few dirty hacks.

Of course I will be writing posts to help anyone who wants to learn how to hack the products page like I did here to fake the Grid. I’ll also keep the old file up for downloading in case you really can’t afford 40.00 and need the Grid. Just remember it only works on the 3.6 series.

Hello WP Seo Bummer

POST UPDATED AUGUST 22 2009!

Version 1.6.4.1 of the All In One Seo Pack once again provides SEO for WP-E-Commerce sites.
Platinum SEO Pack still does not provide SEO for WP-E-Commerce sites.
The following post was not written as an attack against any plugin, WordPress or puppies and kittens. I was simply mourning the loss of something awesome.Which is now back and better than evah!

Used to be that you could use the All in One SEO Pack plugin (along with a code that you inserted between your header.php’s title tags) and you could have unique page titles on WP-E-Commerce Product Pages. It was really great.

But Not Anymore! And installing Platinum SEO Pack does nothing for this issue,either. OK, so I am not sure if it is the SEO plugins, the title tag code, WP 2.8.4 or the new version (3.7.1, not yet upgraded to 3.7.2) of the WP-E-Commerce plugin causing the de functionality of something that was totally beautiful and necessary: unique page titles for Product Pages.

All I know is older versions of all of these(except the title tag code-that is the same) let me have a unique page title when on a single product page. But upgrading everything else means all single product pages bear the exact same page title as the main product page which equals as many duplicate page title warnings in Google Webmaster Tools as you have products. So if you have 2 products, not so bad. If you have 1,200 products,not so good. Because why? Unique page titles rock, duplicate page titles do not rock, that’s why. Unique page titles mean better search results with better information passed to the online shopper, better business for online shop-keepers.

Want SEO for WP-E-Commerce sites ? Upgrade to Version 1.6.4.1 of the All In One Seo Pack !