QUOTES IN MIVA MERCHANT PRODUCT AND CATEGORY NAMES

We discovered something very disturbing lately with one of our recent SEO clients.  When mousing over images and text links that should have been there based on the special code we inserted for them, their image alt tags (alt="Some alternate text") and link titles (title="Some descriptive title") were missing some text.  When we viewed the source, this is what we found.

<img src="someimage.gif" border="0" alt="Product N" ame Category Name Some descriptive text">

<a href="somelink.mvc" title="Produc N" ame Some Descriptive Text">

As you can see, this is a problem.  The quotes in the product name are closing the alt and title tags prematurely.  This client is using dimensions in their product names.  If you have this problem, you should ask yourself some questions.

1. Are the dimensions of my products part of what people search for in the search engines?
2. If so, are they more likely to search for 20 inches than 20"?

Consider either relying on the dimensions being mentioned in the product description and/or spelling out the dimensions as in question two above.  In case you just have to leave the quotes, a solution is available for those who use the OpenUI Look & Feel module.

Darren Ehlers of the OpenUI Developer Consortium and developer of one of the most phenomenal Miva Merchant modules ever made, was nice enough to supply an OpenUI token to display the product and category names while stripping out the quotes in any OpenToken compatible field such as the product description, category header, Category and Product Page Template modules, and more.

For products, use %EXPR(glosub(products.d.name, '\"', ''))% such as <a href="someproduct.mvc" title="%EXPR(glosub(products.d.name, '\"', ''))%">Some Product Name or token</a>

For categories, use %EXPR(glosub(categories.d.name, '\"', ''))% such as <a href="somecategory.mvc" title="%EXPR(glosub(products.d.name, '\"', ''))%">Some Category Name or token</a>

A solution will be forthcoming for those who choose to stick with the MMUI Look & Feel module that comes with Miva Merchant and would like to hack it.

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