Allow Dots, Slashes and Spaces in Miva Part Numbers

[joseibarra]

I'm sure someone will share the reason that Dots, Slashes and Spaces are not allowed in Miva Product Codes.

We are a reseller and carry products from 100+ different manufacturers and many use Dots, Slashes and Spaces in their part numbers.

When we have to add those we have chosen to convert all the Dots, Slashes and Spaces to dashes so they can then be imported.

But shoppers using search engines are not going to replace the Dots, Slashes and Spaces in the part numbers they seek with dashes.

We added a Custom Field we populate and display it on the Product Detail page in a separate place but since we can't get that into the H1 Product Code we feel we lose shoppers.

Eventually the search engines might will pick up our Custom Field but it seems all our competitor sites are able to get the Dots, Slashes and Spaces into their H1s so Internet searches are probably going to our competitors instead of us - if we even show up at all.

Maybe there is some trick to it or some special coding that would do the job but it would be easier if Miva allowed Dots, Slashes and Spaces in Product Codes.

[William Davis]

I'm sure someone will share the reason that Dots, Slashes and Spaces are not allowed in Miva Product Codes.

We are a reseller and carry products from 100+ different manufacturers and many use Dots, Slashes and Spaces in their part numbers.

When we have to add those we have chosen to convert all the Dots, Slashes and Spaces to dashes so they can then be imported.

But shoppers using search engines are not going to replace the Dots, Slashes and Spaces in the part numbers they seek with dashes.

We added a Custom Field we populate and display it on the Product Detail page in a separate place but since we can't get that into the H1 Product Code we feel we lose shoppers.

Eventually the search engines might will pick up our Custom Field but it seems all our competitor sites are able to get the Dots, Slashes and Spaces into their H1s so Internet searches are probably going to our competitors instead of us - if we even show up at all.

Maybe there is some trick to it or some special coding that would do the job but it would be easier if Miva allowed Dots, Slashes and Spaces in Product Codes.

joseibarra, I have been lobbying for product code field validation on the forums for years to avoid those and other problematic characters used in URLs.

Create and/or use a product UPC custom field and use said field in your product page template HTML title, meta description, and h1-h6.

[dreamingdigital]

Try toggling this setting in the Domain settings part: "use strict validation for codes" checkbox.

Otherwise use the SKU field or anything else for your actual product code and modify the H1 tag display to have that custom field value instead. There are numerous ways around this.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Try toggling this setting in the Domain settings part: "use strict validation for codes" checkbox.

Otherwise use the SKU field or anything else for your actual product code and modify the H1 tag display to have that custom field value instead. There are numerous ways around this.

Yes, BUT. Make sure you are using URI Managment. You can't have a URL like /mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&product_code=this/product/rocks.

Or, a URL like "/this/product/rocks.html". i mean you can, but it won't get you to the product you want.

[kayakbabe]

Slashes are pretty much reserved on the internet to designate folder hierarchy in navigation. I haven’t seen a manufacturer using slashes in something like 20 years. I feel for ya Jose.

[joseibarra]

Appreciate the ideas of which I will investigate.

I had already toyed with the idea of using a Custom Field (SKU is already used) so I think I will pursue that...

One manufacturer has part numbers like this which have a space and a slash:

Q-20-2D SCANNER/EMV

I think the Custom Field, modify the Product Display Layout page will work just fine.

[lesliekirk]

I'm sure someone will share the reason that Dots, Slashes and Spaces are not allowed in Miva Product Codes.

We are a reseller and carry products from 100+ different manufacturers and many use Dots, Slashes and Spaces in their part numbers.

I'm sure by now you've figured out how to turn off the "Use Strict Validation for Codes" but I am going to hijack your thread because I now need to figure out how to help a store that has nothing but product codes with spaces in them. It is preventing the usage of the URI Management and now the store owner wants to make some changes to the product codes (they still have spaces in them) and wants to be able to redirect the old product code to the new one. Can this even be done using the old hand crafted .htaccess file (I can hear David screaming "nooooooooooo...").

Bigger problem, even if the store converted to spaceless Product Codes, it would still need to have the old spaced codes redirected.

How is this going to be handled?

[Brennan]

A couple things worth clarifying here.

You can have spaces, special characters in your product codes if you turn off "Strict Validation for Codes" as mentioned above.
If using URI management, Miva uses the slugified product name by default so it will remove any spaces and replace them with dashes for the name field. This also allows you to change the product codes without the need to URL redirects since the URL is not changing.

If the URL was changing (either you change it manually or you update the product name) Miva does have the option to create a new URL and automatically create a 301 redirect to the new URL that got created. This feature is set to "never" by default, but you can go into URI Management and configure how the URLs behave on product update. Just be careful how you use it because typically you don't want your URL changing often.

lesliekirk your situation sounds a bit different as you are not using URI management already. Your best bet would be to upload a spreadsheet of the old URLs (current structure) to create 301 redirects in URI Management after you generate the new URLs you want (you could also keep the same URL structure you have today by doing this same things but upload them as canonical URLs) As long as you don't have parameters in the URLs this will work great.

If you coming from old style Miva long links that does contain URL parameters, your only option is to build a .htaccess file of the old URL to the new URL for each product/category.

[lesliekirk]

A couple things worth clarifying here.
lesliekirk your situation sounds a bit different as you are not using URI management already. Your best bet would be to upload a spreadsheet of the old URLs (current structure) to create 301 redirects in URI Management after you generate the new URLs you want (you could also keep the same URL structure you have today by doing this same things but upload them as canonical URLs) As long as you don't have parameters in the URLs this will work great.
If you coming from old style Miva long links that does contain URL parameters, your only option is to build a .htaccess file of the old URL to the new URL for each product/category.

So color me confused. Will the uploading of a spreadsheet bypass the errors cause when manually trying to create a URI? There is no plan to update to product codes without the spaces.

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The links are not the old-style long links

[Brennan]

The URL cannot have spaces only the product code (if you turn off strict validation for codes)

So you're saying the current URL structure has spaces like that?

[lesliekirk]

The URL cannot have spaces only the product code (if you turn off strict validation for codes)

So you're saying the current URL structure has spaces like that?

Yes, the current URL structure has spaces. That is how the vendor provides the product codes, so it's how the store owner inputs them.

[Brennan]

Got it. Then your only real option is to build all the redirects one at a time in the .htaccess file. There is not going to be a rule based way to go from having spaces in the product code to using a sligified product name for example.

[lesliekirk]

Got it. Then your only real option is to build all the redirects one at a time in the .htaccess file. There is not going to be a rule based way to go from having spaces in the product code to using a sligified product name for example.

What is going to be the best format to use for the URL with spaces in an .htaccess redirect file? The browser is output the URL with plus signs in the spaces.

[Ron Frigon]

The browser is output the URL with plus signs in the spaces.

That seems odd to me. I would try a couple different browsers. A space should be %20.

[lesliekirk]

That seems odd to me. I would try a couple different browsers. A space should be %20.

I thought so too, but I even looked at on Microsoft Edge, different machine from my daily driver and they are there too. I'm now wondering if I should take a peek at the current htaccess file. Could they have been inserted via that way?