Left Column Category Display

[bcannon]

Has anyone created a Category Display in the left column like YouTube does when you click on their "Videos" link?
I think I could make this happen but wanted some feed back before I start tearing this thing apart.

Ya know what would be nice...
If vshare opened this product up so developers could create add-on modules for things such as this. Like (for those who are failure) Miva Merchant does with their shopping cart software. There is very little that can't be done with Miva's shopping cart through the use of developer modules.

Thanks for the support
BC

[bcannon]

Well, no takers on this I guess.

Well I did add a left column to my site. It was a little cumbersome but it works.
If you are interested to see or have any comments you can check it out at http://www.gspirittv.com

Later
BC

[bplex]

From what I can see, your HTML is a bit off on that display (it seems as though the categories start in the middle of the box and drop below it).

If I had known you were simply looking for a category linking system, I could have told you how to do that as that is extremely simple. The term "left column" doesn't really apply as if you know HTML, you can put whatever you want wherever you want to put it.

The problem, however, with putting category link displays up is that if you use PHP code, it adds a bunch of SQL queries and slows down vShare a ton, especially if you have a popular website. I'm not sure if yours is static HTML code or not.

[bcannon]

Hi bplex, Thanks for the reply,

Yea, the HTML may have been a bit off when you were looking at it because I was just working on it. I added a couple of links for "featured videos".

You say that a category linking system is extremely simple, I would like to see what you have in mind, because the way I did this, takes some work.

What I did was:
I have two sites - a (Miva Merchant shopping cart hosted with Hostasaurus.com) and a (vshare video site hosted with HostOnNet.com).

The main site is my Miva Shopping Cart and I am using an iframe to pull the vShare Video content into the site.
In order to make this work I create a new iframe page with-in my shopping cart to display the desired link page.
And yes, they are all hardcoded.

You say that PHP coded links can slow the system down - I don't know php very well; I am an HTML, Flash, and Miva user, so I am not really sure of all the details behind this. What I do know is that YouTube has a linking system and they are a very popular site, how do this without suffer performance degradation?

Thanks dude,
BC

[bplex]

Yea, the HTML may have been a bit off when you were looking at it because I was just working on it. I added a couple of links for "featured videos".

Ah. That would explain why it looked a bit off. I just checked it and it does appear to be correct now.

You say that a category linking system is extremely simple, I would like to see what you have in mind, because the way I did this, takes some work.

What I did was:
I have two sites - a (Miva Merchant shopping cart hosted with Hostasaurus.com) and a (vshare video site hosted with HostOnNet.com).

The main site is my Miva Shopping Cart and I am using an iframe to pull the vShare Video content into the site.
In order to make this work I create a new iframe page with-in my shopping cart to display the desired link page.
And yes, they are all hardcoded.

All you need to do is make changes to your templates to include the links that you want to have. It's basic template/HTML design. The way you have done it, you could have easily built a table that ran along the left side of your page that contained the links. One thing to understand is that the templates are just guidelines. You can pretty much put whatever code that you want into your templates.

As for your iframe idea, if I were doing it, I wouldn't use the iframe approach. This can create security problems as you can run into cross site scripting issues. A better approach would be to wrap vShare around whatever you wanted at the vShare site versus using your shopping cart.

You say that PHP coded links can slow the system down - I don't know php very well; I am an HTML, Flash, and Miva user, so I am not really sure of all the details behind this. What I do know is that YouTube has a linking system and they are a very popular site, how do this without suffer performance degradation?

This is like comparing Apples to Oranges. Technically, anyone can use PHP coded links. However, you need both optimized and scaled software as well as optimized and scaled hardware. YouTube is not a site consisting of a server. Rather, YouTube is a site consisting of a server farm. They have separate servers that deal with each aspect of their site (page rendering, databases, file conversion, storage, processing, etc). For them, they have so much power behind running their site that things that would typically be server intensive do not matter. For the small guy running vShare, you have to consider that, by the design of vShare, all processing is handled by a single server. Because of this, you have to be very considerate of what processes you want to take on and what processes you can live without.

[bcannon]

I like your suggestion and I actually did try this; wrapping vshare around what I wanted in my vshare site instead of using the shopping cart, but I had some challenges with getting the width to match the 1000x780 that I am using with my cart. I just started using vShare a couple of days ago and need to familiarize myself with the program a little better. I am going to take a better look at this later on.

Question: Is there by chance, a master template that vshare is wrapped in or would I have to modify each template individually to get the 1000px width I want?

Thanks for the info on YouTube, very cool. Hopefully one day, my site will require multiple servers as well.

Thanks for the support
BC

[bplex]

Question: Is there by chance, a master template that vshare is wrapped in or would I have to modify each template individually to get the 1000px width I want?

There isn't, per say. You do have a header and footer template that is used as the basis for all other templates, but there isn't a "master overlay" template. Generally, when it comes to template work, you will find yourself editing just about all of them to get your look and feel correct.

[bcannon]

Thanks for all your help, thats what I thought.

[grynmoors]

Which is what I had to do for this design:

http://rappelzvideos.com

I had to change every template and the css. That site is version 2.6. I have not yet upgraded it to 2.7, nor do I have any immediate plans to do so.

I am finding, however, that 2.7 is a lot easier to work with since most of the design elements now reside within the css. YaY!