Recent Developments
Existing customers can access the full development logs via the "My Account" section but the following notes highlight some of the significant recent developments, both within axis vMerchant itself and within those aspects of axis diplomat that have a direct bearing on axis vMerchant website.
Publish History
Now, with the latest levels of axis diplomat software, publishing data to your axis vMerchant site now also logs the details of the publish - when it started, finished and whether it was successful or not. The details of the one hundred most recent publishes are logged and this information can be very useful - not only for seeing the length of time, on average, a publish takes, but also in helping to diagnose problems, typically with your local internet connection.
Meta Tags on CMS Entries
For situations where you are using the CMS system to build a structure of self-contained pages (such as a Help Centre, or a collection of Information Pages for Delivery, Terms & Conditions, etc.), it can be helpful for Search Engine Optimisation (and best practice) to supply Meta Tags (for Page Title, Keywords and Description) and the CMS system now supports this.
Import/Export of CMS Entries
For batch updating, it is now possible to export your entire site's CMS content to a spreadsheet, update it and import it back in again. One particularly useful application for this is if you are having your website translated into another language (especially if you are using a bureau for this).
Canonical Tag Support for URL Re-Writing and Printer Wizard/Equipment Compatibility
In certain situations, there can be more than one URL (web address) that leads to the same page of your website. The most common situations for this are
- your product pages when you have URL Re-Writing (since both the rewritten and non-rewritten pages both lead to the same place). This should not happen with sites that are built with URL Re-Writing from the beginning but those that have it added after the site has been built will find that the Search Engines have already indexed the non-rewritten URLs.
- with the Printer Wizard or Equipment Compatibility search results (for example you can get to the same place by specifying the manufactuer and the model or just the model).
Canonical tags are additional tags that can be added to your webpages to tell Search Engines the correct URL to use. This prevents the Search Engines seeing your content as being duplicated - something that is increasingly frowned upon by Search Engines.
PayPoint Support
We are pleased to announce that we now have support for an alternative Payment Service Provider to SagePay - PayPoint. The PayPoint logo will be familiar to many from their payment stations in local corner shops but they are also an established online payment processor, with a similar commercial model to SagePay.
Meta Tags and Images on Equipment Compatibility
The Equipment Compatibility module with axis diplomat is used to allow you to define which parts or accessories fit which pieces of equipment. For example, this could be used to indicate which printer cartridges fit a given printer or which roof rack fits a particular make and model of car.
The Equipment Compatibility module was recently extended to include the ability to specify meta tags (Keywords and Descriptions) for use on web pages that include search results based on the Equipment Compatibility database.
At the same time, the module was also extended to include the ability to include photographs of the pieces of equipment for use on the website. This has been done in the same style as Stock and eBusiness Group images so that you can specify both a main image and a thumbnail. System parameters also exist to allow you to specify default main and thumbnail image sizes so that images will automatically be resized when they are added.