9 replies to this topic

[sevegunter]

First off, I sell safety videos. Through many hours of work, I have edited all my videos down into short previews. I would like to add each preview to its video. To clarify myself, each product already has a description, picture, etc. I would just like to add a preview option in with the rest of the information. The back end of my shopping cart - MetaCart e-Ship V-8 For PayFlow Link - has no option for this. Is there any way to reprogram the cart to allow it. If so, would my web designer, who is well-qualified, be able to complete it? If not, how hard would it be to transfer all my products into a new shopping cart that can?

Thanks for any help!

[Randy]

What format are the videos in sevegunter?

Depending upon how you want to approach it you can probably embed the video right in the page itself or provide a link that will open a player for the video.

I've never used MetaCart so don't know how easy or hard it is to edit, but one would think they would at least allow you to add a link to the template page.

[sevegunter]

Randy:

The preview videos are in .ram format. However, the cart will not allow html to be put into the description. I could add a link to the templates page, but how would that link go to the specified video preview?

[Haystack]

I commonly see videos like this displayed as a screen shot in the description that links to the video file to open in a video player. If you can't put HTML into the description you can't create a link or insert an image, so that might be the issue that needs to be addressed.

[sevegunter]

Ok, how hard would it be to buy a new cart that would allow the preview and just import my products over? I have over 2300 products so reinputing them into a new cart is out of my budget.

[torka]

You could try for something like osCommerce, which is open source and free. It wouldn't cost you anything to buy that, it's easy to modify on your own and there are literally over 1,000 modifications written that you can freely download. Dunno that it would import, since I don't know the format of the database your cart uses, but if it doesn't, the money you save on buying a new cart could hire a temp for a day or two to input at least the majority of the products.

As I say, I'm not familiar with the cart you're using, but if it has the ability to add custom fields to a product, or has "user defineable" fields already there, or there's an unused field in the product database that you could repurpose for this, then you could put the actual filename of the video in a product field.

Then, you just reference that field in place of the file name when you put the code in the template. In other words, you write the code code to call a video, such that the only difference between the video for one product and another is the actual name of the video file. Enter the video file name in a field associated with that product, and call that field in the code where the filename belongs. That way you can put the snippet of code in the template, and it will automatically call the appropriate video snippet when it loads the page with the actual product information.

I use this method with my company's cart to call some additional graphics and a couple of other page elements for each of the products in the company's store.

--Torka

[sevegunter]

Thank you for all the help, guys and girls.

I really appreciate it!

[Randy]

I just took a really quick look at their site and it's an ASP-based cart. I would be lost in that most likely, it's been too long.

However if you can figure out which template writes the IMG SRC line that shows the image in the product detail page it should be fairly simple to add a link for your .ram video clips. Especially if you name the .ram file the same name as your image name.

Just a matter of stripping off the .gif or .jpg and changing that to your .ram. Then adding an A HREF around the image. You'll probably want to add a BORDER=0 to the IMG SRC tag also to keep from having a border around the linked image.

Then you could add some text to your description to tell people to click on the image to see the video clip.

I hoped they had a user forum there since people who are familiar with it could tell you exactly how to do it. For free most likely. I didn't see one however.

It does however look like the developers will quote you a price for customization. You're talking about something that will be a very minor tweak for someone familiar with the cart. If you like how the cart works, in my opinion it would be worth a shot to contact them to see what they would charge to fix up a template for you. It's probably going to be much less expensive than purchasing another cart, and far less painful that transferring everything to another cart, then re-learning the new interface.

Of course all of that depends upon if you're happy with MetaCart...

[sevegunter]

Randy: Could you give the link to their website? I haven't been able to find it. Thanks much, man.

[chrishirst]

that'll be MetaCart then.