So part of my Javascript parses the breadcrumb string for specific main section names and that way I know whether I’m in a main section, or in a subsection of a main section. For what I’m doing that’s very useful.

I think you’ll have a simpler time by working with domain remapping. The thing that might be a problem is that your PF pages will be limited to whatever you can do in the PF customization interface. I don’t see how you could do some of the things I’m doing in PHP, for example, which is preferable since Googlebot won’t read anything but images and links that you’ve added with Javascript.

It’s confusing and frustrating… parts of the Google system read text that’s written with Javascript but it just doesn’t get indexed even though they’ve been able to read it.

I must be cleverer than I thought because that was the idea I thought might work: a script in the sidebar checking for the specific URL, then calling up the correct content. I was wondering why breadcrumbs were so important to you.

I was not planning on using MyPFStore, though; I’m not looking to consolidate all my various POD endeavours on my site proper. I was going to use PF’s domain mapping thing, and so I’m not worried about duplicate content. Mainly I want those sidebars for information about the designs, and the stories/myths behind the images.

Again thank you so much for explaining. That’s more than enough info to get me started.

<3

I originally wrote all of that in Javascript, but later converted a bunch of it to PHP (edit – well, I think I did, anyway) so that it would taste better to Google. Which is the whole point – you don’t want your site to look like duplicate content when Googlebot sees it. So more appropriate text in those sidebars is a big plus.

But it’s pretty complicated. I have to read two pieces of information in order for my page to always know what section its content is coming from. First off, I can read the breadcrumb text that comes in from Printfection. That alone tells me most of what I need to know, except – if I remember this correctly – if you’re on the tab state of a product page (sizes, bulk prices, image closeup). To nail those last few possibilities I have to read the URL of the current page and look for the clues there.

Some of this takes place in a hacked version of the MyPFStore breadcrumb file; the rest is in a Javascript file. I just had a look through there and I’m not finding all the PHP changes that I thought I made. So, you know, I’m confused as well. I’d have to go back to my notes.

To figure out what section or a subsection I’m in, though, it gets sort of ugly. I have to test for the names of the sections in the breadcrumb string. That makes it pretty hard to prepare a general purpose version that other people can use. I guess there could be a sort of admin page where you could define those in, um, a perfect world.

For sections there’s a failsafe – if no custom sidebar is present, a default one gets loaded instead. There’s one place I know where there isn’t enough error checking, which is the case where there’s no custom product image for a sidebar. You get a missing image icon there if there wasn’t one to load.

I did have to dig into all of this a few months back, when I put together the Celtic Art Works site because that site works the same way – but I’d have to dig into it pretty thoroughly again before I had a hope of really explaining it. Of course the really cool thing would be to turn it into a system that other people could use – but maniacal laughter just burbles out of me at that thought.

My CPShop pages use a much simpler solution because of CPShop’s hooks; but I don’t think I have a failsafe sidebar for those pages, either.