Top Navigation Bar not showing even with cat tabs enabled

[palagio]

Hi SPH

We've had our site running on the zen cart about 2 years now. Thats right were using 1.3.9g.

We originally had the top nav bar working with the dropdown but my previous developer/coder said it was slowing the site down and that it was causing too many queries. So he took the top nav bar down. We have now changed over to a new server and this shouldnt be a problem so we want to put the top nav bar back on as we now have 13,000 products and a lot of categories so site is more difficult for customers to navigate. Its our hope that enabling the top nav bar on the site will help customer experience and navigation to their required product.
However I dont know how to re enable this or what my previous developer did to disable the top nav bar.
I tried the advice offered by stevesh to amend the code
div#dropMenu ul ul {
position: absolute;
width: 13em;
display: none;
}
deleted the red text and this brought the top nav back on, but its showing all the categories in a jumbled mess and they seem to all be dropped down already.
I'm not sure how to get this looking neat and tidy again, so any help would be grateful.

Also checked and the switch is on in the code you mentioned in the header.php.
So not sure what to do to get top nav back working and clean and tidy.

[palagio]

SPH

with regards to your other point about the description split display below. I uploaded the original files of this mod and it shows on the site ok, this is on oour live site www.clicknorder.co.uk
Only problem is I cant format the text below and can only edit in plain text.
Then i found the thread with a new set of files for the mod done by mauryg which is supposed to be for updated versions of zen i think, so i tried on our test site to upload these new files and the description below disappeared and doesnt show on the page anymore.

thanks

[SPH]

Hi,

I got my drop-down categories working now and will leave on for awhile:

http://www.prommart.com/

I remembered that I turned off (.BAK) a couple of files in the CSS folder relating to the drop down. Since I wasn't using the drop down I turned them off for even more speed.

Probably should take up the other mods on their forums.

Have to run around with the wife so maybe later.

[palagio]

Hi SPH

Yep, it looks better now with the dropdowns, just dont know how to get it back like that on my site, it might still not work great though as we have a lot more top categories than your site so i'll have to check out the kick ######## mega mod you mentioned

thanks

[SPH]

Now I remember a couple of other reasons why I didn't use this templates drop down.

1. In IE7 (according to netrenderer.com), if categories wrap to a second line as mine do the second line moves down in to the blue search area being hard to see, not to mention looking bad. As it is, my categories only wrap two lines in Firefox and Chrome, which look okay, but in my IE9 I get a third line with the last category. IMO, this template with its drop down definitely looks best with just one line or row of top level categories.

2. The way the drop down renders the categories, I wasn't sure about google/seo.

I'll be turning off the drop down if not going back to my latest template.

I also have the Abbiamo Supremo template loaded with its Mega Menu. Looks pretty good and you might try it, should give a similar color look to your current template look. Here is its demo:

http://www.brandonturpin.com/online-...bbiamo_supremo

[SPH]

I just turned Abbiamo Supremo template back on, looks good (there are so many nice free zencart templates coming out lately.) I'll leave it on for now.

Note that I hand-built by top level categories in one of its drop down cells. Side categories work as normal once inside site.

With the number of categories you have, even using the Kick B U T T Mega Menu as on Abbiamo may cause trouble with it's standard category drop down.

Here's a page at it's support forum, note post no. 37 and the site link therein, also has alot of categories:

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...t-Thread/page4

[palagio]

Hi SPH

I noticed on your previous comment above you mentioned:
'Note that I hand-built by top level categories in one of its drop down cells. Side categories work as normal once inside site.'

With the mega drop down menu, would i be able to manually create some top line categories that would sit above my current top line categories?
And then select which of my current top cats fall in which of the new top cats?
And would this still leave my categories on the sidebar as they are?

See I have 13,000 products on my store and the catalog is updated twice a year by my supplier, I then upload this updated csv on easy populate. The csv i get from my supplier already has the category structure in place and as you can imagine I don't want to manually change this every twice a year on 13,000 products as it takes too much time.
So i want my categories to stay the same structure, but if i can fit them into a smaller row of top line cats that would be fine,
Bear in mind the category names on my supplier csv don't change, just some products are dropped and sometimes new ones brought on

I like the look of this mega drop down but just want to make sure it will work for my system first and not cause me too much work in the long run

regards

[SPH]

Here is the demo:

http://nettuts.s3.amazonaws.com/819_...emo/index.html

I used the "4 Columns" cell to hand-build my top level categories when I tested the Supremo template. I suppose more such cells could be built, as needed.

(The new Abbington Mega Menu template has the same drop-down styles a little different from Supremo.)

Other than that, these mega menus so far use the standard zencart drop down: a single line of top level cats with subcats flying out from the side. It may not work or look that great with a large number categories, as seen on the link in post no. 48 in this thread: allforyourwedding com

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...t-Thread/page5

So while you have an impressive-at-first looking horiz drop down, the actual categories are pretty contained in a smallish area. But some handbuilding could overcome this, but maybe not if you have many categories.

How many categories will you have? Figuring out the best nav layout is always a concern and challenge.

There is a version of the zencart drop down menu where you have a choice: 1. standard drop down in a single line with side cats flying out; or 2. Top level cats across the top with subcats dropping down from them. The Blue Stripe Basic template comes with this choice (it's messed-up at zencartinfo) but had a couple of other issues. But was an overall nice template, I thought...liked it alot when I tested it.

But any horizontal category navigation is limited by the width of the site...unless you're willing to have them wrap to two or more rows. Unlike side nav categories, which are theoretically unlimited in to how many you can have.

You could also consider using header EZpages across the top linking to your most important categories, and use standard side categories for the bulk.

Or use the default zencart top categories, which will wrap as necessary.

I understand you have a ton of products. Do you also have a ton of categories?

[SPH]

Just saw your site again, lots of top level categories with subcats. Even subsubcats. Will be a challenge if you want a drop down.

[palagio]

Hi SPH

Thanks for your input, thats right my site www.clicknorder.co.uk has a lot of top level categories 45 in total.

The problem i have is that I receive a csv file of my products 13,000 from my suppliers and I use this to populate the site. The catalogue is updated twice yearl and the category structure is defined in the csv file.
So I don't want to have to rebuild the category structure in the csv file every time.
The "4 Columns" option on mega menu looks quite nice and like it would work well for our site.
But can I manually build the top level categories for this?

What I would like to do is manually build say 10 top level cats for this and then set my 45 current top cats into these.
Then I could simply upload my csv catalogue file as usual without having to change the category structure on the csv file, would this be possible do you know?
Do you know who developed this mod or where there is the technical support forum so that i can ask the developer?

Thanks in advance