We have been asked for a way that other sites may provide links directly to individual plants on Hortico's site. Since our site is run from a database, it was less easy to link to us than other sites which have static html pages for their roses.

So, here we'll tell you how to set up links on your site directly to a single plants view page on Hortico. Please follow these directions carefully and let the webmaster know if you have any problems or suggestions. If you would just like to link to our site as a whole, please see our FAQ How do I link my site to Hortico? Please don't be put off by the length of these instructions, it's really not that hard to do.

The Short, Easy Way

1. Go to the detail page for an individual plant you wish to link to.
2. Notice the "Link to this Plant" link at the bottom of the page.
3. Use the URL of that "permalink" for your link.

   example: http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=sbcn&catno=DALEDA10

More Details

If you want to link by name, with a pulldown menu or something slightly more complex than by Catalogue number, here are the details you need.

1. The main page to link to is at this address, but you'll need to add some arguments before it will work.
   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp

2. There are two ways that you may specify a particular plant to view. Generally calling by CatNo is most accurate and will be the easiest to set up though Name is certainly ok too.
   1. Call by CatNo (Catalogue Number)
   2. Call by Name

3. You select which of the call methods you want by an Action argument.
   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=SOMETHING

4. The values you can use are as follows:

   Method	Allowed Values for Action
   Show by CatNo	"showbycatno", "sbcn"
   Show by Name	"showbyname", "sbn"

5. Lastly, you need to add the value of CatNo or Name for the plant you're trying to call.

   Method	Data Needed
   Show by CatNo	CatNo=XXXXXX
   Show by Name	Name=Some+Name

   A couple of limitations to note, CatNo's and Names must be at least 4 characters long. CatNo's must be less than 9 characters long though they are usually 6 characters. Single quote (') characters are allowed. This is just to prevent problem queries or short queries that return everything in one long page. To purposely return large groups of plants, contact us for assistance in pointing to our multi-page view.

6. Now you put this all together in one link for something like these examples:

   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=sbcn&catno=DALEDA10
   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=showbycatno&catno=DALEDA10
   
   

   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=sbn&name=AUNT+HONEY
   http://www.hortico.com/roses/view.asp?action=showbyname&name=AUNT+HONEY

7. Make sure that you're using our names and catno's for the plants. The query you pass must match what we're calling something in our database, even if we have something mis-spelled.

   Please Note: multi-word names may be used, but you must replace the spaces with the + character. This is standard in url arguments. (Example, name=Bicolour+Austrian+Copper)

8. Then, please test all your links to us before posting them to your site. Broken links will make both of us look careless and will cause unnecessary loading.

9. Lastly, please email us and let us know that you're linking to us. We'd love to know who is using this capability and we'd be happy to provide a link back to your site from Hortico. Comments and suggestions, even complaints, are always welcome.

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Some Notes and Details

• If, for some reason, the query you specify matches more than one plant in our database (like this example), the view page will show a brief pick list that will allow visitors to select which they want to view. If you notice this during your testing, you may want to select a different form for your query.

• You may use either upper or lower case in the url, it works with both and with mixed case.

• You may use either of the allowed Action values. We give both in case some people like the clearer, longer forms like "showbycatno" but they operate exactly the same as the shorter forms like "sbcn."

• Keep in mind that you can also link directly to our Books using the CatNo's.

• Please do NOT copy information or photo images from Hortico's site without our explicit approval. We've gone to a lot of work to produce this site and we strive to honor other people's copyrights. Please honor ours.

• You can also make an HTML form on your site that produces the same url's as we discuss above. View the source of this page to see this example.
  Albertine Aunt Honey Bicolour Austrian Copper Golden Wings Hawkeye Belle Leda (Painted Damask) Orange Butterfly

• Again, please test all your links to us before posting them to your website. If we have excessive loading or problems due to incorrect links, we may have to remove this feature.

• Please keep in mind that we're providing this as a service and aid to other sites in the spirit of helping each other over the internet. Please don't abuse our trust by trying to hack, load down, or otherwise harm our site or our legitimate users.