Core fuctionality of ByAttribute

The core functionality of ByAttribute is that it adds a block with specific attribute-values somewhere on the page. By default, this is a list of manufacturers, but this can easily be any other attribute as well (color, size, tag).

Of course this gives a huge boost to your SEO, because ByAttribute automatically creates an unique collection of products for each attribute-value list.

But besides this core functionality, ByAttribte also allows you to improve page titles. This tutorial shows you how to fully customize the page title using XML-code.

Default Magento behaviour

By default, Magento uses the category-title as title-tag for a category-page (for example Computer). In most browsers, the title-tag is then displayed in the browser-bar or in the tabs. If the category has a parent-category, the title of the parent-category is also included on the page:

Computers - Electronics

Default Yireo ByAttribute behaviour

As soon as the Yireo ByAttribute module is enabled, it replaces the default title with the category-title plus the sitename:

Computers - MyShop

Now, if Layered Navigation is activated and you filter all products by manufacturer, the name of the current selected manufacturer is also added to the page-title:

Apple - Computers - MyShop

If you select after this the color Silver, this option is added again to the page-title:

Apple - Silver - Computers - MyShop

The order in which these options are added, is determined by the ordering of the product-attributes (managed through Catalog > Attributes in the Magento backend). The seperation-character ("-") can be modified through System > Configuration > Catalog > Search Engine Optimization.

Just like these filtered options are added to the page-title, they are also added to the META-keywords on that page.

Customizing the behaviour

The behaviour of these attributes being added to the page-title and keywords, can be modified through the layout-XML of Yireo ByAttribute module. The file app/design/frontend/default/default/layout/byattribute.xml can be copied to your custom template and modified there.

Please see the Using the Yireo ByAttribute module guide for more details.

Customizing the title-tag

The default behaviour described above involves the following XML-tag:

<action method="setTitle" />

Instead of using the default store-name, you can use your own custom title instead by adding a (first) argument to the XML-tag:

<action method="setTitle"/>
    <default_title>My Custom Shop Title</default_title>
</action>

By default, any attribute used in the Layered Navigation is just added to the page-title. But this is sometimes not preferred: There could be a certain attribute (Price) that does not need to be included. The XML <action> allows you to skip such a tag by adding a second argument which involves a comma-separated list of attribute-names to skip.

<action method="setTitle"/>
    <default_title>My Custom Shop Title</default_title>
    <skip>price,resolution</skip>
</action>

In other cases, the value of the selected option is not really clear (Silver) so you might want to add the attribute-label as well (Color: Silver).

<action method="setTitle"/>
    <default_title>My Custom Shop Title</default_title>
    <skip>price,resolution</skip>
    <addlabel>skip</addlabel>
</action>

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