Re: Refine Filters module released
 

@Vladimir - what about Issue #2 reported today? Will it be fixed too?

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

It's the same bug you posted yesterday. It's fixed.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Are you sure? One is about variants of an options, the other one about options in a filter class.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

The module developer has looked at your bug descriptions once again and confirmed that both bugs have the same origin and that it's fixed. Please check it.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

I will, thanks for letting me know.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

>>> ISSUE 3

I uninstalled the previous version, and I installed the new one dated today. Some issue were solved, but I got one more. If you disable Expand feature for a filter, in Front-End nothing happens (Apparel -> Size, skin Light & Lucid 3 Columns). I cleanup the cache store, but nothing happened in good.

I uninstalled this new version and intalled again the previous one. It is working. Something happened in bad between releases of this two versions with Expand feature. It needs an investigation.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

>>> ISSUE 4

I have a product class with 1 option. I add a new option named Decision (option type: Boolean field). I refresh Front-End and I see this filtering option Decision (Yes/No/Doesn't matter).

Then I changed option type to Text field. I refresh the Front-End and surprise (!!), Decision still appears as Yes/No/Doesn't matter. How this can be possible? There is no product to have this option assigned. And this field is not boolean is text. OK, I assigned to a few products data for Decision option (text field). Refreshing the Front-End nothing happening.

This is a bug.

>> UPDATE - I deleted Decision option, but it continues to appear in Front-End. Any idea? Also if I click No it shows there are 2 results, but if I want to see them, the result is zero products.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

All filter states are stored in your browser session while you navigating the store. Thus to reset it you may either clear cookies or start new browser session or open new incognito window.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

We have adjusted this.



And this has been fixed.

Actual module packages are in File Area.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Let's say as administrator I change some option type. What happens with the Front-End of the visitors? All will have the same issues I reported. I cannot inform them to clear the cookies or start new browser session.

Could this be analyzed and being solved without interfering with visitors?

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Only customer's attributes selections and filters sate (expanded or not) are store in their sessions. So if you change a filter type, it will immediately change for customers.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

it seems the filter class value can not be imported by csv like extra field, any idea how to bulk import, thanks

albert

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

For the moment, there is no import facility for filter-specific values. We will think about adding it in the future. If you need it now, we may offer you to implement it within bounds of our custom devleopment service (http://www.x-cart.com/custom-development.html). Feel free to contact us.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Hi Vladimir

Are you going to incorporate any of the ideas I emailed you?

I was playing with the demo any don't like how the products are refined. Can it load the results automatically rather than have the little popup with the amount of products and Show?

Also the filters as they stand on the demo will adversely affect SEO results by creating duplicate urls unless you have made it so Google cant follow your filter mod.

Cheers
Phil

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Phil, our email conversation regarding SEO stopped for some reason. At least, I did not get any reply from you. Please could you re-send it so we continue our discussion on how to implement SEO URLs better. So far there are many pros and cons.



It's going to be implemented in future versions as an options.

We decided to stay at current serult because many people said they do not want to see blinking of intermediate results before they ended they selection - it distracts.




That's a really good question. One of those we were discussing in our emails. If you remember, my counter questions was like Why we should create SEO-freindly URLs and then prevent search crawlers from seeing them? What's the point?

We may discuss it here if you wish. It would be interested to many forum members I guess.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Hi Vladimir

Sorry I thought I had replied to your last email. Ref. The SEO urls you want to create these for Google to crawl for say /brand/department/color/ but you dont want Google to crawl a url with multiple filter categories in say /brand/brand/department/color/color/. That would cause too much content in Google with duplicate content. Thats is why we have /norobots/ on the end of those urls so that we can target them with the robots file.

Here is an example of one of our good urls:
http://collectables.co.uk/Fashion-Accessories/department-handbags/brand-kipling/colour-black/
and here is an example of one we dont want crawled:
http://collectables.co.uk/Fashion-Accessories/department-handbags/department-luggage/brand-aubrey/brand-ki...lack/norobots/

I am happy to carry on discussing here and get input from other users. We are spending a lot of time and money on getting our SEO just right and our filters which are still being tweaked have made a huge difference to our traffic and SEO rankings. :D/

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Please could you refer me to some article or manual where it's described? Unfortunately, I cannot find anything particular for this method in Google.



That would be really great if we could implement something similarly effective in terms of SEO to Refine Filter module.

Let's discuss it.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

I'm not sure if I have a manual describing that. I might have a best practice document from one of our SEO companies with it in but a lot of our work has come from working with a couple of very good SEO companies at meetings and email conversations.

Some of it is also common sense when you look at duplicate content articles.

For example, why would you want google to rank a link that is promoting two brands? No-one would be searching for that for a start but the second point is that the content shown on that page filtered to two brands would also be shown in two separate pages for the two brands on their own.
ie. /brand_a/brand_b/ showing 20 products, 10 from each brand. This can be seen by Google as duplicate to /brand_a/ and /brand_b/ showing 10 products each which are more relevant pages. The issue is that Google can penalise your two separate pages affecting their ranking because of the joint page.

The art to faceted filters is making Google think that you have lots of relevant content with real urls that people will be searching for, not to just create millions of facets that may or may not get searched. So far with this method Google has indexed approx 500k faceted urls from our filters to relevant content like below.

http://collectables.co.uk/Fashion-Accessories/department-handbags/brand-kipling/colour-purple/

Let me dig through my paperwork and see what I can find to upload.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

since this mod is work like extra field function, and most store have thousands items, it's not good to ask your customer to add it manually one by one.

this mod is expensive and it should have import function like extra field, this is no way for me to pay additional. i really don't recommend to buy this mod, should consider other power filter mod.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

I understand that SEO is a new alchemy and it's really hard to guarantee good results but there are some practices documented over the internet which are muct have for those who care about search rankings. One of those practices is preventing dupliacte content. The only method I heard so far is using canonical URLs (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394). Still it's used when both pages are needed for sutomers but only one must be shown to Google.

Please could you ask your SEO consultant to bring some light to using "/nofollow/" in the end of URLs?

Also, X-Cart already have pages for separate producs, category's products and manufacturer's products. Why are you sure Google won't treat these new filter pages as duplicates?

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Thank you for your opinion. As I said we have it in plans but if you need it asap, you may consider paying for this.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

We use the /nofollow/ because we dont want google indexing lots of urls for prices and selections which would cause duplicate content. We then use the robots file to tell Google to not index urls with /norobots/ in.

We have found that having a brand page along side category pages that have filters of brand can affect the rate at which you climb google rankings. You can have issues with Google not knowing which page to rank for instance collectables.co.uk/kipling/ (Brand page) or collectables.co.uk/Fashion-Accessories/brand-kipling/ (Category page). We know the difference but google doesnt if you have SEO'd both pages. Google can switch its weighting between pages and back again constantly which we have experienced causing slower growth. We are looking at removing brand pages from our site soon to improve SEO rankings.

The reason we are doing all this is to make the site look like it has lots of categories and sub categories all with relevant content and products but without actually having the hassle of managing all those categories. Plus it works great for the customer journey.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Vladimir, you should make a top prior to make this module work with X-MultiCurrency module. It is annoying to switch the currency of the Front-End, then seeing all new prices, but price selector in Refine Filter module remains on the default currency. This is a serious bug.

I agree that we need a way to import - export these filters.

More issues and bugs hope this week (only a few time available for testing).

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

@philrisk: how did you make the script showing those color swatches? I agree that icons will make this module more good looking.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Is this thread dead or something?

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

how can we have a try, please?

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

We've made Refine Filters compatible with X-MultiCurrency. Updated module packages may be downloaded from File Area.

As for import, it's one of the next feature to implemen. Along with New Arrivals special filter. I'll keep you all informed.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Do you mean Refine Filters module? If so, you may either look at it at our X-Cart online demo (it's important to go to it from the module page: http://www.x-cart.com/extensions/modules/refine-filters.html) or buy it. In case it does not fit your needs, you have 30 days to refund it according to our moneyback policy.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Thank you for this implementation.

You have to continue to make RefineFilters compatible with the other QT modules, for example Ratings, Reviews (based on number of reviews), HotProducts (mark as New).

Hope getting time this weekend to test the new version. More information will follow in a Word file.

Base on the help file you improved (nice work!) please let me know if this version has "Disable checkboxes for unavailable attributes in dynamic filtering" feature available. The last version I have didn't have it.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

On ratings filter, it requires changes in X-AadvancedCustomerReviews module. Techanical diffculty here is that an average rating of a product is not stored in a separate field in a database but is calculated on-the-fly each time. And since there is no value for a product, there is nothing to compare. We thought to add it to Refin Filters module but decided to leave it for X-ACR to not duplicate functionality of ratings calculation. Anyways, we are planning to add it soon.

New Arrival filter will also be implemented soon.




It's implemented some time ago and existed in previous module versions. Please update your module.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Off Topic: could you please forward this issue to your team member in charge for XC Help site?

I would like to generate User Manual in PDF from this link: http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:User_manual_contents&action=pdfbook

But it doesn't work. It was working I guess 1 month ago.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Sure. I've passed it to the responsible person.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

You should update the public demo for RF filter to the latest version.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

@Vladimir: I downloaded the latest version from my Helpdesk account. These features are not part of this distribution:

- Disable checkboxes for unavailable attributes in dynamic filtering
- Truncate long attribute names to XX characters (0 - do not truncate)

Please take a look inside those 3 SQL files and you will agree me. Something is wrong with this distribution. It should be updated according.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Thanks for noticing. I've looked into the problem - it seems that Pdfbook extension for mediawiki does not work well with grown number of articles. Increasing php memory limit didn't help, so I'll be looking for an alternative.

Yury Z
x-cart.com

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

I've looked into it and found out that for some reason x-refine-filters-4.5.5.tgz package does not contain that options. I've informed developer and he's already fixed that. Please download the pack one again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Ok, new features are visible by now. As a point to investigate.

I checked: [Disable checkboxes for unavailable attributes in dynamic filtering]

I unchecked: [Show dynamic range for sliders]

Using price slider I can generate 0 results easy. Do you think is a good idea to keep [Show dynamic range for sliders] when [Disable checkboxes ...] is enabled? In my opinion yes, but you should do a program logic investigation.

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

I am glad to announce that new arrival special filter was added to the module. Updated packages have just been uploaded to the file area.

Your feedback is welcome!

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

Is it based on "Mark as new" from time to time feature (which can be set in Product Management page)?

Keep going, this module still needs a lot of nice features (which are missing for the moment)!

Re: Refine Filters module released
 

It's based on X-HotProducts add-on logic (including "Mark as new"), i.e. if a product is treated as new, it will be shown under New Arrival filter.