Using a pointed domain with ShopSite pages
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February 25, 2011 at 5:59 pm #48775
ShopSite has the ability to publish files into a folder, and when combined with pointing a domain name to a folder on your hosting account you can use ShopSite to easily create pages for multiple websites at once.
Step 1 – The Pointed Domain
To use this method, a folder needs to be created in your /www/ folder (or in the folder ShopSite publishes to) with permissions of “777″. This permission setting allows ShopSite to publish files into the folder.Example: /home/primary-account/www/new-folder/
You would create the folder and set it’s permissions using FTP, but if you’re not familiar with FTP just let us know the name of the folder and we can create it for you.
When you have the folder created just email us it’s name along with the name of the new domain name and we’ll configure the domain to point to the new folder.
NOTE: For the new domain to point to your account with us, the domain’s name servers will need to be updated to the following: ns.serverhost.net, ns2.serverhost.net, ns3.serverhost.net. That change would be made at the registrar where you purchased the domain name. We can assist with this change if you’re unfamiliar with how to do it.
Step 2 – Publishing Files
ShopSite can publish files into a folder just by changing the filename for the page. Whether it’s a regular page (Edit Page Content > Advanced Info > File Name field) or a More Information page (Edit Product Info> More Info Pages > More Info Page File Name field) you can insert the folder name before the filename.Example: new-folder/filename.html
TIP: Use just the folder name and a “/” after it, do not put a “/” at the beginning of the folder name.
Now when you publish your site, pages with a folder in front of their name will be created in the specified folder.
TIP: Be sure one of your pages has a filename of “new-folder/index.html” so when someone visits your domain name a default home page appears. (Otherwise a filename will need to be entered when they visit the URL.)
Step 3 – Extra Files & Links
When you have a domain running from a folder on your account that folder doesn’t have any of your additional folders inside of it such as the /media/ or /published/ folders. The HTML code for your pages may try to load images or CSS files from these folders that do not exist.
A way to get around this is to sym-link these folders from your main /www/ folder into the pointed domain folder. We can setup these sym-links for you upon request. Additional folders may be needed as well, and your website designer will be able to tell you if your design uses any additional folders which should be sym-linked.
Advanced Options
If you’re going to use ShopSite’s “Assign Items” feature and let it build links to pages or products, your templates would need to be updated because ShopSite will use your primary domain name and the folder name when it builds links.For example: http://www.primary-account.com/new-folder/file-name.html
But you want it to use: http://www.pointed-domain.com/file-name.htmlAn option to avoid this is to use a custom page template for the pages on your pointed domain and change this line in the “[--DEFINE LINK_TO_PAGE--]” section:
Change it to use your pointed domain name and an extra Page Field for the filename:
In this example we’re using Extra Page Field #1 to store the filename (be sure to fill it in when you create the page) and that will allow links to be built correctly when ShopSite publishes.
If you assign products with More Info pages to pages on your pointed domain the same can be done with a custom product template and an extra product field.
Another option would be to use a custom perl script which strips the folder-name out of the URL at the time the page is created and call the script in the template. This would require the creation of a perl script and a custom template but you would no longer need to use an extra field to store the filename. We can provide the script and syntax if you choose to go that route.
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That’s all it takes – a pointed domain, folders in your filenames, and a sym-link or two – and now you can use ShopSite to publish pages under a different domain name. You can use this method to create a landing page highlighting a specific product, some regular content pages for a small website, or anything that comes to mind which you want to create with ShopSite.
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