Good Morning everyone! I was wondering if anyone else has noticed a problem with losing text links in their long descriptions after they make changes and upload them.

I keep noticing broken links in my long description. I highlight the text I want to convert to a link then click the "add URL" button. It adds the links fine and uploads them just fine. The problem is I have to "re-do" the links everytime I make changes and upload. I have quite a few links throughout my products so it gets pretty annoying to have to remember to go through and do all them every time I save and upload changes.

If I don't redo the links at each new upload I end up getting one of two scenarios:
1. The link is simply "broken". It will still be blue underlined text like the normal text links but it won't be clickable

or

2. For some reason the link will simply revert back to a link to my shop homepage even though the original link I created was to a totally different page. (This seems to be the most common)

Its getting pretty frustrating but as a temporary fix I've just gone ahead and made the clickable text the actual URL so people can cut and paste the URL if the link is broken.

I'm using the most current version of coffeecup and I use the "Classical Jazz - Default" theme right now.

I don't know why it's happening but I thought I'd bring it up and see if anyone has any thoughts. Also, if you have links within your text you may want to double check them and make sure they work!

I'm not sure whether the problem is actually occuring during the upload, maybe on the server (lunarpages) or simply within the program whenever I save and exit. For whatever reason I have to constantly monitor the links and make sure they work

Sorry for all the posts, but I thought I should mention this in the unlikely event it would be significant. I copy and paste the url for the links. Since this has been a recurring problem I made the text for the links the same as the URL the link points to when clicked. This way I just highlight the text, copy, then click add URL and paste it in the box rather than typing. (Yes I am careful to ensure I only highlight the actual url and nothing else which would cause the links to break). I don't know why that should cause any problems but I thought I'd mention it.
I'm sure the link addresses are correct since I usually test the links after upload so I know initially everything is ok...from what I can tell the problem occurs if I save, close the cart software and then open, and upload changes without reentering all of the links.

Dr James,

Your post got me thinking, I have only one listing with a link as I was just wanted to try it out.

I checked my shop and that listing and YUP same thing is happening here.

Rosey

Good I'm not the only one! I'd suggest just making sure you have the actual URL spelled out in the description for now so people can copy and paste it as a work around until someone figures out what the problem is.

Luckily for you, you only have one link to worry about! I have about 10-20 and it gets really aggravating when I go to fix a simple one word typo and then upload. Instead of 30 seconds it takes me an extra 10 minutes messing around with fixing the links before I upload.

Me too same problem, though i thought it was human error IE mine !

So I took the links out completely

I think I understand the issue now. What is funny is so far we have only had the people in this thread report this I would have expected far more people to report something like this.

Question though. How many times do you actually change the link inside of text? Once you configure your product descriptions, do you find that you must update the link a lot?

I will see if we can get that feature added in to a future update.

Maybe I didn't explain what is happening well enough, or maybe I'm just not understanding Scott's question, either way let me clarify to anyone who I may have confused.

The problem with my broken or misdirected links is not because I change the links a lot. I'd just assume make the link once and forget about it. The problem I'm experiencing is that my links are just spontaneously breaking or corrupting EVERY SINGLE TIME I save my shop, close it, and then reopen it at a later time! When I close my store and then reopen the store file at a later time to make ANY CHANGES, ANYWHERE the links are broken or pointing to my shop home page.

Here's what happens. Imagine I set a link for the very first time in my product description. I save my changes and then upload my cart to the server. I navigate to the store and check the link and it is working just fine. Since I'm done working on my store, and my changes are saved, I close the coffeecup shopping cart creator program.

Now suppose tomorrow or several days later I decide to add another item or make some other random change to my store. I simply open my shop in the shopping cart creator software. For whatever reason the links I created and saved last time are now either broken and not working or pointing back to my shop homepage (it seems to be about 50-50). I have no idea why this happens since I'm 100% sure I save my changes. Anyway I know its not an issue with me forgetting to save my changes since all other changes save. It only seems to be an issue with the links.

For whatever reason the software, or something else out of my control, seems to be corrupting the links (or at least not saving them correctly).

I suspect this problem is actually happening to more people than we know...it's just because they haven't realized it. They make the link, check it after upload and forget about it. They wouldn't suspect the next time they load their shop that their links are broken. They then unknowingly upload the broken links. I never suspected that my links would get screwed up the next time I opened the software. So for weeks I was unknowingly uploading broken or misdirected links. It wasn't until sales began to slow and people began to request to order via phone much more than usual that I decided to check for errors etc.

Now that I'm aware of the problem it is an absolute pain in the rear for me. I have a fair number of links and I have to go through and redo ALL of the links in my cart EVERY time I open and make ANY CHANGES....ANYWHERE in the cart. The other day I noticed a minor typo in a product description and it took 30 seconds to fix the typo and about 10 minutes to go through and re do all the links in EVERY product description before uploading my shop. If I forget to do this I have a shop with broken links.

So to answer your question Scott, I personally don't have much of a need to repeatedly change the links...I'd just like the links I create to be there unchanged the next time I open my cart file.

In my OTHER long winded posts I probably created more confusion than I needed, but I was trying to give an idea of HOW I was making my links and exactly what I was doing in case it was some fluke related to the way I make my links with cutting and pasting rather than typing them.

Can you attach your .scc file and all related source files to your support ticket so we can try to re-create what you are describing here. I am not sure what you may mean by broken link or pointing to your shop home. Links sort of work or they don't. When you update your ticket, try to give us as much info as you can so we know what specifically we should be looking at before the issue happens and what to look at when the problem occurs. If we are able to replicate it, we can definitely fix it. Right now I just don't really understand the issue fully still.

Basically I make a link, check it in preview mode and its fine. I save changes, upload my shop and check that the uploaded link is working now that things are uploaded to the server. Every thing is fine.

Everything is fine whenever I initially create a link. The issue is when I save and close the shopping cart program. After I re-open the cart all the links I JUST created and saved are now broken or incorrectly linking to my shopping cart's homepage even though the original link was NOT to my shop's homepage.

For futher clarification, here is what I mean by "broken" and "pointing to my shop home".

1. "Broken" - The link is now not a "link" to anything anymore. Even though it was a valid link when I saved my cart, uploaded, and then closed my file the day before. Now the next day when I open my saved cart the link is dead. It's still blue text, it's still underlined, but if you preview the page it won't link to anything....if you don't change anything and upload at this point it will upload a dead link. I don't know why...but the link is no longer clickable.

2. "Pointing to my shop home": Suppose the original link I created was to http://www.someotherdarnpageelsewhere.com. I make the link, test it in preview, save and upload. Everything is fine. The next time I open my cart to work on something the link will NOW be a link that takes you to my cart's homepage. (The same effect as clicking on "shop home" in the navigation menu). I have NO IDEA why the link is now a link to my cart's homepage since the original link was to a totally different page.

I understand what you mean when you say links usually work or they don't. Which is why I think it is really wierd that some links just spontaneously change into the URL of my cart's homepage. It would make more sense to me if the all links were just dead broken links when this happened.

This wouldn't be a big issue if I only had a link or two in my cart, I'd just live with it and fix the link everytime I opened my .scc file. Unfortunately it's not that easy for me.

I'm going to create a simple sample shop and play with it and see if i can figure out what the deal is. If that doesn't work I'll try and get to attaching/emailing my files for you guys to look at