We are trying to finalize our decision on CS-Cart. We have been impressed with about 90% of all it has that we require. One of the big items it doesn’t have is the ability to have manufacturer descriptions / logos on a manufacturer pages. This also means no control over things like meta tags / descriptions. Manufacturer pages for us create a large amount of traffic. Has this been discussed in the past and is there any work around? Seems to be a pretty important piece of SEO.
Cal
You can create manufacturers pages in CS Cart. It Doesn’t automatically create a click able link from each product but you can add that to the product description if you want.
You can see a basic example here. Site isn’t finished yet but we have added a brans menu on the home page which will have most of our main brands listed.
You can see how we have the link from the product page here.
You can also do everything with SEO as you can on any other page.
Is this what you were referring to or have I picked you up wrong 
P.S. This is using latest version of CS Cart.
You can set up manufacturers with all the meta tags and stuff. The problem I have had is to figure a way to display the manufacturers.
I like what utilityempire did in the product page, but it would be nice to have this a little more automated.
You can see what I am trying to do here:
[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=15044[/url]
Basically I have the manufacturers all set up and I have a link in the features tab, but it is just going to the wrong place. Hopefully I’ll get a little help with this and it will help us both.
Now when I set up my manufacturers I couldn’t figure out a way to have all the meta information, but still use them as filters. What I ended up doing is creating one group called “Brands” and in that group I have “Brands” and “Manufacturers”.
The brands feature is set up with the type being text.
The manufacturers are set up with the type being extended.
The same names are used between the features, but with the extended type selected I can enter in all my meta and SEO information.
I’m not sure if all that was clear enough. If not let me know and I’ll put together some screenshots or something.
Brandon
[quote name=‘utilityempire’]You can create manufacturers pages in CS Cart. It Doesn’t automatically create a click able link from each product but you can add that to the product description if you want.
You can see a basic example here. Site isn’t finished yet but we have added a brans menu on the home page which will have most of our main brands listed.
You can see how we have the link from the product page here.
You can also do everything with SEO as you can on any other page.
Is this what you were referring to or have I picked you up wrong
P.S. This is using latest version of CS Cart.[/QUOTE]
Utilityempire,
You rock, this is exactly what I was looking for. Even if it is a bit of extra work, at least it is possible. Thanks!
Glad I could help.
If you need any help getting it set up then let me know.
Cheers
[quote name=‘modernm’]Utilityempire,
You rock, this is exactly what I was looking for. Even if it is a bit of extra work, at least it is possible. Thanks![/QUOTE]
I’ve just found a problem with this option though. CS Cart has added a META No Index to this page 
[quote name=‘utilityempire’]I’ve just found a problem with this option though. CS Cart has added a META No Index to this page :([/QUOTE]
Ugh! Why the hell would they do that?
[quote name=‘modernm’]Ugh! Why the hell would they do that?[/QUOTE]
Only reason I can think is duplicate content. But I don’t think it would count as duplicate content as it’s just a page linking all your products with the same links. Not sure on that one.
They actually have this added to a number of pages. Most of them are pages you wouldn’t want Indexed so it’s a good idea but would be better having No Follow on some of them.
Not sure how or if this can be removed. It’s only a No Index though so Google will still follow links to and from the page it just wont ever show the page in it’s index.
I’ve been holding back from contacting support until I had a few issues as I have some support credits left. I will open a ticket as I have a few things I want to ask them now so I’ll let you know what they say.
Cheers
John
Thanks John. We depend a lot on our manufacturer pages. You can see on our site the level of detail we go to. We get a large amount of traffic from those pages and they are also ranked very high.
[url]http://www.modernmoppet.com/manufacturers/knuckleheads-clothing-1/[/url]
Hi,
Sorry for not updating this thread sooner, I forgot about it.
The explination I got from CS Cart was:-
“I have solved the problem. The “func.php” file located in the “addons/seo” directory have been changed. Now the tag will not be included into the pages like this: http://www.stylehorizons.co.uk/ed-hardy.html”
So must be something you need to edit in that file. Sorry I can’t be more help but they did the change for me, didn’t cost me anything so either give it a try yourself or contact them via the helpdesk.
If it’s any help I can send you my func.php so you can compare with yours.
Hope this helps.
John