Web Link Addresses

The fields described below appear at the base of the Defaults tab on the Inventory Item Maintenance form when Webstore is in use.

You can use these fields to reference images of inventory items to display on Webstore catalogue pages.

Image URL

To display pictures of your inventory items you enter the file name of the picture that relates to the selected inventory item here. The Webstore templates default to enable a relative image location with the /webstore/images/items virtual directory (mapped to the C:\Gt_Path\Webstore\website\images\items folder in IIS Configuration). For example, if you enter 68sc_secretary.gif, the files are stored in the /webstore/images/items virtual directory path. Use the most relative URL to ensure less repetition of the same prefix.

If the images are within different folder groupings — for example, the images for desks are separate from the images for chairs — enter the item chairs/68sc_secretary.gif and another item desks/123_desk.gif. Alternatively, you can change this in the pictureurl webtext on the categorystockitem and searchline include templates to be relative to the /webstore/images virtual directory or another new virtual directory alongside images or webstore.

To use an absolute web address, the Image URL can be https://www.asite.com/images/68sc_secretary.gif and the link URL may be https://www.asite.com/68sc_secretary.htm. You must change the pictureurl webtext on the categorystockitem and searchline includes to do this, removing the reference to the images/items/ path.

Only do this if the addresses link to more information, or the image itself is found, on multiple different external servers that you do not control. If linking to others content, it may pay to request that the site hosting the image or information does not change the address without informing your company as otherwise web users are led to a dead link, or have a broken image link displayed on your website.

Link URL

The link URL is also represented in the categorystockitem and searchline include templates with the tag named linkurl. Unlike the Image URL tag, this tag has no relative formatting constraints in the Webstore templates, and so can be either a relative web address (for example../brochures/item.php) or an absolute web address (for example: https://www.thesite.com/product_detail.php).

Notes

You must consider the scenario if the external website is not secured with encryption and your website is. In this case, a message may appear on your web users browsers saying that some content in the page is not secure.

Although you can pass session ids to other computers to keep session state for a logged in web user, and allow a link back to your own site, it is ideal to have a certain amount of trust that the people who maintain the external server, that they would not be inclined to use these session ids against you.

Although session ID's soon time out, the URL could be seen and used by someone with access to the other server's site log details if grabbing and using this session id in the timeout period and in the scenario if you deselected the Check Session IP Addresses option on the Webstore System Preferences form.

To pass the session id through with the link, the sessionid tag can be appended to the end of the URL in the template, as can a domain name or extension to what is in the URL text above. As long as that server holds the session and adds it to a dynamic link (using ASP, Cold Fusion or PHP) back to your site, you can go there and click the link back without having to log in again.