OUR BLOG: Yahoo Store from A to Z and RTML development "secrets".

Click the red triangle in the Standard mode Editor Toolbar.

A second bar with additional yellow buttons will appear at the page toolbar:

Contents - to control your store structure (Contents Tree), page dependencies, “Basement” and “Siberia” areas.
Files – access to your store library /lib directory
Templates or page template – access to the last viewed store template (also the “shortcut” to templates library)
Types – access to the list of store page types, either default or custom (editable)
Database Upload – another access to DB upload with a wider list of functions comparatively to DB upload via Catalog Manager
Config – access to store properties
Controls – store editor settings, including the store editor Search page and Edit by ID function

A list of useful links to Yahoo store resources and other web tools :

Yahoo Help pages for store users: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/store/edit/index.html

Find broken links on web sites: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

SEO book: http://www.seobook.com/

Search Engine Keyword Tracker & Keyword Ranking Tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker: http://www.webconfs.com/redirect-check.php

How is your site viewed by SE crawlers? http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

Google on-line sitemap generator : http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

If you have any other resources which might be useful in development and maintenance, please  let us know about them!

Let’s suppose that you’ve just opened a brand new Yahoo store account. You’re excited and ready to put up your items for sale. But hold on a second. Before you upload the inventory items we insist that you follow these steps to create a list of Editable Templates.

By default RTML templates cannot be edited. To be capable of enhancing these templates, you need to make copies of all your base templates. This is a necessary step because afterwards, these template copies and newly created templates will have the possibility of being altered and edited.

As we have already said, you must make this list of Editable Templates before you upload any items because it will help you avoid the process of changing the templates for each item one by one.

So how does someone create a list of Editable Templates?

The first step you must take is to turn on the Advanced Editor Mode in the Control panel.

You will now see a second row of control buttons on the bottom of your main page

-Click on the tab called “Contents”

-In the contents page, click the yellow button named “Templates”

-Once you access this page you will see a list of all the templates.

-Find the template “Storetemplate.” and click to open it.

-Find the “Copy Template” button and click it.

-There will be a field that will appear where you have to type in a name for the new template. An example could be, “New-Storetemplate”

-Click the “Copy” button.

Congratulations. You have successfully created a List of Editable Templates! To recap, this was made possible through a process of copying the parental template (Storetemplate). Afterward, the RTML system automatically copies subsequent templates on it’s own, and all you need to do is apply this new template to your store pages by editing the store properties. This method will benefit you because you will have fewer pages to edit, and your workload will greatly decrease.

For example, let’s edit the first page of the site (Home page). Open up the Home page and click Edit. Then within the “Template” property change Storetemplate to New-Storetemplate and click on the Update button. Do not worry; the page layout will remain the same, because the new template is the exact copy of the old one.

Finally, all you need to do is apply some changes to the Config page. This is marked by a yellow button called “Config” at the top or bottom of your store pages (depending on the page settings).

When you are in the Config page you must edit three drop-down menus (Default-item-template, Default-section-template, Default-group-template) and change Store-template to the new editable template.

As a result of taking these steps you now have the possibility to edit templates and to have all newly created pages under an editable template by default.

In our future articles we will discuss how to improve your Yahoo Store functionality by adding some small changes to the templates.

1) To add “Bookmark & Share” button to store pages, go to www.Addthis.com first and receive the code from there.

There is the example of such a code:

<!– AddThis Button BEGIN –>
<a class=”addthis_button” href=”http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;username=xa-4c3eff9c2b54f517″><img src=”http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif” width=”125″ height=”16″ alt=”Bookmark and Share” style=”border:0″/></a><script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#username=xa-4c3eff9c2b54f517″></script>
<!– AddThis Button END –>

Note: If you want to get the sharing statistics, you have to register on addthis.com.

2) Create a global variable -share-code (med-text) and place and paste the code into it. See more details here: http://www.alphastoredesign.com/blog/2010/03/11/how-to-add-global-or-local-properties ).

3) Open a list of store Templates. Then find custom Item-order template.

Click on it and open.

Find the RTML expression:

WHEN OR
       @price
       @sale-price

Click on WHEN.

Click the “New” button and create a TEXT operator. Then click the “Paste After”. After this click the “EDIT” button and set the value of TEXT operator to @-share-code

After these simple procedures the “Add This” button will appear on every item page near the “Add to Cart” button.

Within Yahoo Store RTML Template, this operator is showing as:

BLUE nil

The operator takes color value and returns its blue component of RGB (red green blue) color model in numeric value between 0 and 255.

EXAMPLES:

  WITH= variable blue
        value BLUE @background-color
    WITH= variable red
          value RED @background-color
      WITH= variable green
            value GREEN @background-color
        BODY background-color COLOR red red - 20
                                    green green - 20
                                    blue blue - 20

At this example, we took Red Green and Blue color components from the global variable @background-color. Then, we are using these components to make the body background darker.

Within Yahoo Store RTML Template, this operator is showing as:

AS-STRING nil

The purpose of this operator is to take an argument and convert it to a string.

EXAMPLE:

Let us pretend, that one of our test item has “Saving on Quantity” price value, defined as: 30 5 125 10 200. Where: 1 item price is $30, 5 items price is $125 and 10 items price is $200.

At this case the property @price returns numerical array (30 5 125 10 200), while AS-STRING @price returns text string – 30 5 125 10 200

Within Yahoo Store RTML Template, this operator is showing as:

AS-NUMBER nil

The purpose of this operator is to take an argument and convert it (if possible) to a numerical type.

EXAMPLES:

AS-NUMBER “$77″

The argument in this example starts with “$”, where “$” is not a numerical character and therefore the AS-NUMBER returns 0

AS-NUMBER “10.44 20 30″

This example returns 10.44 because AS-NUMBER stops at the not numerical blank character.

An year ago, Facebook implemented a “like” button that let users share content that they approve of with each other. 3rd party websites are now also capable of implementing this button so that the site could get more attention on Facebook. These codes will show customers which of their Facebook friends have liked or visited your website.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10160112-93.html

You could use 2 ways to install the Facebook “Like” button at your store:

1) To enable a new Yahoo Social Media Sharing feature by yourself.

See more info here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/social/social-03.html

If you are experiencing a difficulties to setup or customize the feature’s appearance on a page, then:

2) We could setup the Yahoo feature or to setup our version of it, based on XFBML fb:like tag and Facebook’s JavaScript SDK with Open Graph protocol. We could implement the button at any position on a page, depending on page design and customize it as necessary.

Note: For both versions you have to obtain the Facebook Application ID.

See more info here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/edit/social/social-06.html

You can find an example of this feature setup at : www.holytrinitystore.com, www.hello-gorgeous.net (drill down to Item pages to see).

As per April 26, we could see some important fixes and updates made in built-in Floating Cart module:

1) It looks like the DOCTYPE has not pushed to update upon Floating Cart (FC) publishing. This information has received from several websites and needs to be verified.
2) The FC layout now improved (not fixed) to work with old DOCTYPE. We believe that this issue will be resolved by Yahoo soon. You could see the progress on www.bigfitness.com (FC + old DOCTYPE). As of today there are still some layout discrepancies on top headers in IE 7-8.

1) Yahoo recently provided very important fixes to their Floating cart module and resolved system issues with the “Multiple Order” check box and “Radio Buttons” in the product options. This is good news.

2) However, as of today, April 16, publishing of the Floating cart will force the DOCTYPE of your pages to change.

If your store pages have custom page coding based on the old DOCTYPE, then publishing of the Floating Cart may cause errors to the layout of your store pages:

Changes in DOCTYPE are not reversible!

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR STORE PAGE’S LAYOUT WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BEFORE PUBLISHING THE YAHOO FLOATING CART!

How to check:

1) Save any page of your published store locally using “save as..” – In I.E. for example, click file, save as, and there will be a few options. Web page, complete (.htm, .html). Now you have saved the entire page.

2) In any text editor open the page and change the DOCTYPE line manually (see our previous post to get the source).

3) Open this page locally and observe changes. If you notice that the layout will change, do not publish the Floating cart.

4) If your pages already have affected by this issue or if you are interested in accommodating of your store HTML coding to the new DOCTYPE, call or e-mail us to get a quote