Showing products of different categories in one list

[seville]

Hi Zenners,

I was searching all day long, but I couldn't find an answer, maybe I search for the wrong question.

On my first page www.hummergearsales.com I have some images, which should link to a list of products. For example

I have the image H2, when you click on it, it should show all products of H2. But right now it's only showing the H2 products of the category Tire Covers. I would love to have also the H2 products of the categories
Phonebase->Hummer->(but only the H2 Phonebase) and
Accessories->Hummer->H2 Accessories in this list.

So everything, what has to do with H2 should be in this product list.

You can see the website here www.hummergearsales.com in the middle you see the image H2, click on it and you see the product listing of H2, but only of the category Tire Cover http://www.hummergearsales.com/catal...cPath=65_66_76

Just FYI, I don't want to rearange the category listing, since there are much more categories and products coming.

I hope I did explain it understandable.

Thanks a lot, I appreciate any help

Seville

[swguy]

How about using

<a href="index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&amp;search_in_description=1&amp ;
keyword=H2">H2 Products</a>

Of course, you could always create a new category and link all your products in, but this seems easier to me.

Good luck,
Scott

[seville]

How about that is so simple as it's great.

Why didn't I get this idea before. Thank you so much swguy.

Have a great day

Alex

[swguy]

I think there would be a lot of value in being able to "tag" (a la del.icio.us) your products and search on these tags. See my thread

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...light=tag+meta

I could write a program that would scan the metatags table and build a list of tags that
you could use for searching.... it's a possibility. I think it might be interesting to build a page
like this that would show your product portfolio at a glance. (Think of this as a histogram that's sorted alphabetically.)

http://del.icio.us/tag/

Scott

[seville]

thanks swguy, that wouldn't be a bad idea if that's possible.

Seville

[swguy]

It's certainly possible - the real question is how I would limit the brazillion possible permutations of behavior that people would want. My best thinking to date is to do it like Google Sitemap so there's an admin interface to build the page and users (not the Googlebot, but your customers) just see the last page you built. Or maybe I'll allow customers to build this list in real time. Who knows. Stay tuned for more details. :)

Good luck,
Scott

[Kim]

Uh ... if you use the custom Meta Tags, they are already picked up with the stock search.

[swguy]

Yes, I know.

The issue is not whether you can search for things. Clearly you can.

The issue is whether you can stimulate the customer's curiousity to serch for things that he might not have otherwise by presenting them in different ways. It's just a different way of looking at your data.

Why do people use meta tags? It's in the hope that someone will search for something that
they happen to have, and a connection will thus be created. But what if they come to you
by a different route? You could cross your fingers and hope they were naturally curious enough to search your site for what they wanted .... or you could market your wares in a different way and suggest things they might search for (which, coincidentally, would just happen to be areas in which your stock was strongest).

Hope this helps.
Scott