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ZOOMIMAGE Code - Need Help Please

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  • ZOOMIMAGE Code - Need Help Please

    Hello Everyone - First off thank you for taking time to read my post. I am using a VERY OLD SHOPPING CART software that is not very user friendly. It generates all of my webpages "under the cover". I have no control over the name of the PAGES being generated, and the images I use in my shopping cart are always renamed by the software to it's own naming convention. Because of this I am unable to index the images on my webpages so that they will show up on my search pages with the corresponding thumbnails. So my question is: Is there any utility around that can scan an individual webpage, looking for a specific string of characters, and then build a "ZOOMIMAGE" meta tag that I can use? Considering I have well over 1,000 pages to do it manually is virtually impossible!!! Specifically I would want to search for "img src=usrimage/****.jpg" and then specify a replacement parm that would be the name of my thumbnail pic. I know the format of the picture naming convention that my shopping cart software uses so that I could replace the **** with the name mask. Once this is finished then I would need to insert the result ZOOMIMAGE code into the page. that way I could then index my images on the pages and have them linked to my thumbnail images. I've been in business on the Internet for over 15 years and the software I'm using has a great set of back store utilities. It also handles my order processing very easily with little to no human intervention. I realize I need to update my shopping cart software, but I've not been able to find any that can replicate all of my store requirements. Any assistance that someone can offer would be greatly appreciated. I really like everything that ZOOM Search has to offer, and now I really need to implement the thumbnail processing into my search results. Again, thank you for any assistance that can be provided!!

  • #2
    It is hard to comment without seeing the site in question. But my feeling is that you are going to need to write some custom code.

    Do you really want to index the images themselves (if yes, do they have meta data in them?). Or are you really trying to associate thumbs with your HTML pages?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by wrensoft View Post
      It is hard to comment without seeing the site in question. But my feeling is that you are going to need to write some custom code.

      Do you really want to index the images themselves (if yes, do they have meta data in them?). Or are you really trying to associate thumbs with your HTML pages?
      What I am actually trying to do is to associate my HTML pages with my thumbnail pictures. Unfortunately I have no control over the naming of my HTML pages, and the picture names embedded within the pages. I know the naming convention so I could do an association. Here is an example of one of my web pages I want to add the ZOOMIMAGE meta tag to point to the thumbnail picture. The address is //http://www.vintagevogue.com/onlinestore/item10259.htm

      This is an example page that I want to index. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

      Comment


      • #4
        These appear to be static HTML pages? Do you run a program which generates these files?

        Without knowing the CMS (Content Management System) or shopping cart software in place, we can only theorize what you can do, but with most applications for authoring websites in such manner, they allow you to specify meta tags to be included for each page. This way you can have different meta keywords or meta description per product item. If this is possible, you should add your ZOOMIMAGE meta tag here.

        At the very least, there should be some way of specify additional tags to go within the <head> ... </head> section of the page. If it is unable to do this, then unfortunately, this is a pretty significant limitation of your website authoring software. Afterall, you would be similarly limited if you wanted to add a last-modified date, or change some JS, etc.

        There are tools to perform a mass search and replace of text within a collection of files. They vary in complexity and ability, but frankly, you would essentially be investing in workarounds for the limitations of your authoring software. We use the built-in features in UltraEdit to do some search and replace, but you might need something more dedicated to the task. They can generally pick up text and use it to determine the replacement string, but often would require Regular Expressions knowledge.
        --Ray
        Wrensoft Web Software
        Sydney, Australia
        Zoom Search Engine

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Ray View Post
          These appear to be static HTML pages? Do you run a program which generates these files?

          Without knowing the CMS (Content Management System) or shopping cart software in place, we can only theorize what you can do, but with most applications for authoring websites in such manner, they allow you to specify meta tags to be included for each page. This way you can have different meta keywords or meta description per product item. If this is possible, you should add your ZOOMIMAGE meta tag here.

          At the very least, there should be some way of specify additional tags to go within the <head> ... </head> section of the page. If it is unable to do this, then unfortunately, this is a pretty significant limitation of your website authoring software. Afterall, you would be similarly limited if you wanted to add a last-modified date, or change some JS, etc.

          There are tools to perform a mass search and replace of text within a collection of files. They vary in complexity and ability, but frankly, you would essentially be investing in workarounds for the limitations of your authoring software. We use the built-in features in UltraEdit to do some search and replace, but you might need something more dedicated to the task. They can generally pick up text and use it to determine the replacement string, but often would require Regular Expressions knowledge.
          Thank you for your reply, Ray. The webpages are not static per se. The software I use, Ecbuilder, is very OLD. They stopped providing any updates / enhancements / new development back in 1996. So I'm stuck with the software, because it still provides me capabilities that I have not found in any current ecommerce building software. With that said, yes the software does limit me in the capabilites it provides. The only standard that are followed is that the software names the pages in a numerical sequence, and they also take the images I link, and then provide their own names.

          It is possible that I could put a ZOOMIMAGE meta tag into the source, and then specify the name of the corresponding thumbnail file. If I do this would it then be able to take the webpage name and index it to the specified thumbnail file name in the meta tag? If this is possible, my next step is to determine how much time it would take me to go back thru 1000+ pages and modify the source to include the meta tag information.

          Any other suggestions or recommendations?

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by steve02usa View Post
            The webpages are not static per se.
            To clarify, a static HTML page does not mean the page doesn't change. It means that there is no server-side scripting involved. It means the page doesn't change until you manually upload a new copy of the file.

            Which would mean that you have a bunch of HTML files sitting on your computer, which you upload to your server. How do you normally modify any page on your website? That is what we're trying to confirm. There has to be some process for you to add things to the pages of your website without requiring you to manually do it all.

            Originally posted by steve02usa View Post
            With that said, yes the software does limit me in the capabilites it provides. The only standard that are followed is that the software names the pages in a numerical sequence, and they also take the images I link, and then provide their own names.
            The naming scheme is irrelevant if you use the ZOOMIMAGE meta tag.

            Originally posted by steve02usa View Post
            It is possible that I could put a ZOOMIMAGE meta tag into the source, and then specify the name of the corresponding thumbnail file. If I do this would it then be able to take the webpage name and index it to the specified thumbnail file name in the meta tag?
            I think there's some confusion in the use of terminology here which is making your post unclear. There are two different things you are asking about, and I'm not quite sure if you mean it.

            1) "Associating an image with a search result": This simply assigns an image so that it appears next to the search result for a HTML web page. This is described here:
            Q. How do I associate a thumbnail with a particular page?

            2) "Indexing an image": This is actually indexing the contents of a JPG or GIF file, and making the meta data stored within an image (camera type, title, description, etc), searchable. This will result in stand-alone images appearing in the search result, not associated with any HTML web page. This is described here:
            Q. How do I index image files (eg. JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF)?

            I presume you mean #1 and not #2.

            With #1, as described in the FAQ above, you use the ZOOMIMAGE meta tag to associate ANY image with ANY web page. The filenames are irrelevant with this method.

            You should be able to test this out with just one or two files to begin with before you try to add the tags to 1000's of files.
            --Ray
            Wrensoft Web Software
            Sydney, Australia
            Zoom Search Engine

            Comment

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