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Calling Joomla experts - I need help migrating

Discussion in 'Joomla' started by saneinsight, Apr 17, 2006.

  1. #1
    Hi,

    My current website is completely "static", and built by a FreeMarker pre-processor 'fmpp'. FreeMarker is a templating system that can be used for any text templating/processing. I have about 500 products, details which are stored in an excel spread sheet. The process stamps out a product details page for each product, using my existing template. This is all done for SEO. The more pages, the better. The pages have php code in to retrieve pricing info in real-time from a partner's db.

    I want to move over to joomla but need to know how to approach the move. Using the wrapper is a no no, as it uses frames and thats no good for SEO. I don't know where to keep the body content of my existing pages. Even more importantly I don't know what to do with the data in the spreadsheet. If I was ignoring SEO I would just create on php page and use it to dynamically display any product in the database.

    • So what I need is one distinct url or page for each product (cleaned up with openSEF hopefully)
    • The abililty to change the layout of the product details page (a body content template i guess you could call it) once, and then use that to base all details pages layout on.
    • I also need to store the product data in the spread sheet, either still there or in the db somewhere.


    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm a newbie, and have tried to find an answer in the forums, but with my data spreadsheet, it's proving hard to find someone facing the same problem. One more question, to add a brand new html page content, is it ok to cut and paste from an editor like BBEdit?

    Thanks.
     
    saneinsight, Apr 17, 2006 IP
  2. TwistMyArm

    TwistMyArm Peon

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    #2
    My knowledge of Joomla can be considered 'high low' to 'medium', but I have done Joomla components before, so I do have a bit of insight for you:

    Firstly, regarding a distinct URL: this is taken care of by openSEF to begin with. So you'll already have that by enabling openSEF. What I mean by that is while you can use openSEF to make 'pretty URLs', by default it still makes separate URLs per page.

    Have you looked into Virtuemart (e-commerce component)? It will let you set up a nice template for your products and then I believe you can just remove the pricing stuff so that it becomes a product display, as opposed to a webshop.

    If you don't want to do that, then what you're after is a fairly basic component, to be honest. The hardest part of what you're after would be the conversion from spreadsheet to DB and I would definitely recommend that, if only for the fact that it's better to keep things like that as dynamic as possible (I believe) for when you decide you want to add product lists, searches, etc.

    If you have any more questions, feel free to either reply this way or PM me. Don't worry, I'm not going to hit you up for the job (unless you want me to do it :) ), I'm just offering you some help that would not be very interesting to many other people here.


    Regarding BBEdit. Do you mean copy and paste the formatted HTML or the actual HTML source? I can't see why the source would be a problem, so long as you paste the code in to a non-WYSIWYG editor. Go into your global configuration and disable the WYSIWYG editor. If you want to copy the formatted HTML directly, well, I don't know...

    Hope this helps!
     
    TwistMyArm, Apr 18, 2006 IP
    saneinsight likes this.
  3. saneinsight

    saneinsight Guest

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    #3
    Twisty,

    You're the one brave soul to come forward and offer help. You're definately on my christmas card list :D
     
    saneinsight, Apr 18, 2006 IP