Adding text to Manufacturer product pages

[Feznizzle]

Hi Guys,

Is there an easy way to add text and/or images to the manufacturer page? Better yet, html?

Here is an example:
www.smtsuppliesDOTcom/techspray

On that page, we'd like to add information about the manufacturer as well as a logo. Can it be done?

For extra credit, we'd love to be able to sort the products displayed into categories and have those categories show up... not just an alphabetical dump of products.

Thanks!

[dbltoe]

I assume that, at some point, you are going to turn on a sidebox for manufacturers, correct?
One of the best things about open source is that you can do almost anything with the software.
Anne has a good article about adding the manufacturer's logo to the product info pages. The same code can be placed other places as well. http://tinyurl.com/opzgra2. You may have already seen it.
Sorting itself is just a matter of adding an orderby to the database call. Adding in the category images would take some intricate coding. I don't have any test sites with manufacturers to look at so I'm not sure of the actual page to look at since you are using a URL rewriter.
Just a couple of suggestions.
While you are considering adding more images and sorts, why not consider what the site is going to need to work with all the smart phones and tablets being used today.
Responsive templates allow sites to be seen better whether on a desktop, laptop, pad/tablet, or smartphone. You can see what your site currently looks like with different views by using http://quirktools.com/screenfly. Using a responsive template, you can adjust what the customer sees based on a stylesheet for different screen sizes, resolutions, and views (landscape or portrait). Just makes sense to do it in responsive now rather than having to do it over again soon.
One other thing I noticed on that page is the stock description for the first item. If that remains, you will be fighting with over 19,000 similar listings. Your price is lower than those that I checked so, the customer clicking on shopping after doing a search might find you quicker. Changing the description while keeping pertinent information may move you up in page rank just because you are different from the other 19,000

[Feznizzle]

Wow, dbltoe... thanks! Everything you said was great!

And I am in complete agreement with differentiating prod descriptions. I was not involved when that line got added!

I had not yet seen that article on Anne's site, thanks. I did something very similar to that last week for the prod pages, based on another article I found in the forum. I suppose it would not be hard to do the same to the template page that controls the display of mfgr pages. I just have to find it!

That would make the addition of a logo simple/automated. But if I wanted to add manufacturer description text/html, it would get really rough from there.

No, we will not be using the sidebox.

With regard to responsive templates... I totally agree, but it's not in the cards at the moment.

Thanks again!

Btw, any hints about which php controls product display by manuf would be deeply appreciated!

[dbltoe]

probably includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/sideboxes/tpl_manufacturer_info.php