Need to display Zen-cart products inside a div

[Ryan Greenlife]

Hello,

I'm trying to display Zen-cart products inside a div. Is that possible? How would one go about doing that?

Or do I need to build my layout AROUND Zen-cart's layout?

I would really appreciate any help or advice you could offer. Thanks in advance!

[stevesh]

A little more information, please. Are you trying to use parts of Zencart inside another site? If so, it's not a good idea. Zencart is intended to be, and works best as, a stand-alone application.

[Ryan Greenlife]

I'm basically just trying to have a page with a vertical nav on the left listing all of the product categories (I've created this nav), and I want it so when you click a category it loads and my vertical nav stays on the page, instead of going to JUST a zencart products page.

Do you know how I could do that?

[stevesh]

I might be able to do it (if I understand the question), but I wouldn't. Let's see a link to your site.

It's important to realize that Zencart can't be a back-end cart script for your existing site.

[rstevenson]

I'm basically just trying to have a page with a vertical nav on the left listing all of the product categories (I've created this nav), and I want it so when you click a category it loads and my vertical nav stays on the page, instead of going to JUST a zencart products page.

What you'vce just described is the normal behaviour of Zen Cart. So I'm as confused as stevesh. What exactly have you done so far? A link to your site would be very useful to us in helping you.

Rob

[Ryan Greenlife]

This is the page with my menu on it:
http://www.greenlifegardensupply.com/indexcopy.html

As you can see, when you click on a category it leads you to a zen-cart-only page which displays the products. I need to get the menu I made into the zen-cart layout, so it is on the same page as the listed products.

[gjh42]

What do you think you're gaining by building your pages from scratch when you could achieve the identical appearance and functionality (and more) by modifying the Zen Cart template?

[stevesh]

That wouldn't be that difficult to recreate in Zencart.

One of the issues you may have doing it your way is the possibility of sessions problems when switching back and forth between Zencart and non-Zencart pages.

You would have to recreate the Categories sidebox by creating the categories and products in Zencart admin, and if you're going to do that, you may as well make the whole thing Zencart.

[Ryan Greenlife]

I don't NEED to have it all in a new page that I created if that's not going to work. I guess my question, then, is how do I change the Zencart template to have my menu in it?

What file do I have to add my menu to?

[stevesh]

You don't. You'll need to stop thinking in terms of static HTML pages and start thinking about dynamic PHP pages that are built on the fly. (That's not a criticism - we all had to make that leap in the beginning.)

You'll create your categories in Zencart by adding them and your products in Admin - Catalog.