Splash Page Alternatives
 

Hey everyone :)

Being a person that fairly hates splash pages and has no need for an informational intro page, I just want to get right to my catalog. Problem is as you know, that xcart is not written to do this.

I see several options:

1) Use a redirect -- could have possible problems with search engines, and if you have any part of your site outside the cart, I am not sure that you will then be able to access them (haven't tested it)

2) Use the splash -- ick (in my case).

3) Create an HTML version of your catalog and copy that into your index, which isn't very practical if you want everything streamlined and changes often (with multiple providers)

How does everyone else handle this? Are there any other solutions I havent' thought of?

We are redoing one of our sites with xcart, so you can see why I don't need a splash, www.biz-plates.com .... I'm curious if others have better solutions I haven't thought of. As you can see we have areas of the site that aren't easily integrated with the cart as with just text pages.

Thanks!

There are always alternate solutions to everything, most of all with websites.

In my case I use the same catalog index as my site intro page, due to my products that are always in the same categories and all.

In your case, since you have updates on normal base, why not try to alter the .htaccess file in your site root.

Something like this:
DirectoryIndex /catalog/index.html

I havent tried it myself, but it seams logical to work, that way everytime you have updated your HTML catalog, it will always be fresh. Or if you prefer not to use the HTML version do the same to your php version as:
DirectoryIndex /customer/home.php

I guess that wont hurt Search Engines, since they are not redirected by another page that lowers rating, they are just told on before hand where you are. :wink:

I changed the line in my index.php from:
to
and that just goes straight to my catalog page with no redirect when the site is loaded. I have no index.html of course.

i have no idea if this is bad for search engine ranking or what. my site is not completely "live" yet, although we are filling orders. I am curious to hear about whether or not this is a good idea.

These are great ideas :) I appreciate it and will be checking them out.

Off to play! :lol:

If you possibly try out the .htaccess version, please let us know if it actually works, since I will probably need it on my next Xcart (sounds like I need a guinea pig he, he).

LOL, this was going to be what I tried actually so I will let you know. If I break it though, I know who to come after :wink:

Ouch, do you run fast enough ?

check out what we do...
www.rivermarinesupply.com.

We have the catalog page whenever it is re-generates itself at the root category.

That looks good, but I don't think I am understanding....

So you generate and HTML page for your front and then it self-regenerates when you make changes?

You could also make a site "in front" of the store. I see a lot of the stores use x-cart as the entire store (I have done the same in a few cases) however, you could put the about us, and other details about your company etc outside the store in a "mini site". I doubt this would work for all, but quite often it is easier to update a standard html web site than fiddling about with x-cart.