drill down advice

[Caroline Bogart]

I'm looking at scripts to build some directories, esyndicat is at the top of the list for its ease of use.

I'm wondering if I can get some advice. The directory will contain local businesses and internet businesses. Some people might drill down by product and ask for region last. Other people might drill down by region and then specify product.

Can esyndicat handle this scenario?

[Dave Baker]

Hello Caroline and welcome!

I think you can easily solve this problem having added additional fields via Admin Panel. In which will be displayed the additional information.

[Caroline Bogart]

Dave thank you very much for the reply but I do not follow you.

[Vasily B.]

Hi Caroline,
I will try to give some more detailed answer :) There is a functionality in our software to create additional fields directly in admin panel. By default there are only 5 fields accented for links only. But, you can create additional fields like zip, city, street, phone, etc. Fields can be of different types like radio buttons, select box, text, textarea, etc. SO you can create something like a radio button- Local Business, and your visitors who suggest links will be able to fill in these additional fields.
Besides, you can configure the script to accept listings from registered members only. That's quite nice as later you can use mass mailer for newsletters, etc.

Let us know if you have more questions

[Caroline Bogart]

1 That's the manage listing fields feature? I cannot add fields in the demo version on your site, is that because it's a demo?

2 I will ask this question by example. Given a structure like this:

I can create Structure #1:

Dogs
-Dog Food
--Dog Food Superstore, New York City, New York
--Dog Food R Us, Chicago, Illinois

OR I could create Structure #2

New York
-New York City
--Dogs
---Dog Food
----Dog Food Superstore, New York, NY

Illinois
-Chicago
--Dogs
---Dog Food
----Dog Food R Us, Chicago, Illinois

The goal:
To allow people to search for Dog, Dog Food, New York or Dog, Dog Food, Chicago
OR
To allow people to seach for New York, New York City, Dogs, Dog Food

I want to drill down from product or from location.

There will be hundreds of cities and hundreds of products, similar to a business phone book.

Would it be correct to create Structure #1 and add the location as extra fields?

I'm confused because the system will display from Root on down, where sometimes I want Root to be Dogs and sometimes I want Root to be a place.

thank you again

[John Turner]

Hi Caroline Bogart,

You coudn't make changes in demo because it DEMO.

The answers, which been provided by Simon and Dave, is how to create additional fields for listings.

About structure you shoul choose it yourself.

Hope it helps.

[Caroline Bogart]

thank you John, I must not be clear because those are not the answers to the question I think I'm asking.

I need to drill down from both location and from product type. How do I create a structure that will do this in esyndicat, or is it not possible?

As I said I do not understand how the extra fields help solve this question.

thank you

[John Turner]

As I understood,
would be better to use structure

New York
-New York City
--Dogs
--Dog Food

[Caroline Bogart]

Forgive me, please, for being dense. Will this allow me to drill down both through product and through location?

[WTM]

thank you John, I must not be clear because those are not the answers to the question I think I'm asking.

I need to drill down from both location and from product type. How do I create a structure that will do this in esyndicat, or is it not possible?

As I said I do not understand how the extra fields help solve this question.

thank you
Caroline,

The answer to your question is "No".
With current version of eSyndicat you can create only one category three.

But... Here is a little trick that may help you accomplish your goal:

Create 2 top level categories:
1. Locations
2. Products (or Pets in your example)

Now you can create unlimited number of subcategories under each of them as deep as you want.

For "Locations" it could be something like this:
- State
- - County
- - - City
- - - - Town
- - - - - Dogs
...

For "Products" you start with the product group (or pet) and than create categories as deep as you need.

The only inconvenience that you will have to duplicate every listing in 2 categories (one for each category tree).

This way your users will have two options to look for the products they need and if I understand you correctly - this is what you want.

Also you are running some risk of duplicate content because even though breadcrumb menu will be different you will have two identical versions of every page.

[Caroline Bogart]

This is a good suggestion, though it means that people entering links through the front end will need to enter stuff twice.

Maybe I should just hack the source to create a reverse entry for every submission. If the customer enters:
Location.... Product

I let esyndicat enter that but I also create another entry that stores:
Product ... Location

thinking... dunno...