Currently there doesn't seem to be a good way to add custom product_info layouts to zen-cart. There is support for different product types however there is no good/easy way to change existing products to use a different Product Type, and no one wants to re-add all their products to use a different layout.

I've already made a request in the suggestions forum about making a way to modify existing products product type, which at the moment is not possible with the current edit system since the product type is one of the qualifiers for loading the proper editor.

The current work around I use is to add a Products Types field to the "Quick Updates" contrib and change it there, or manually edit the product type in the database.

Based on this, I would like to release a series of different product layouts that are compatible with current template versions, regardless of the template being used. The plan of attack would simply be to use different 'product types' as "layouts" based on the tpl_product_info_display.php file.

This way you could choose via Quick Updates a different "layout type" for your products easily and see if any different layouts that you'd rather use, without completely using a new template.

So the question is, would the ##############ized use of the Product_Types feature to be used as Layout_Styles be the best way to support this?

This may also promote more contribs of other product layout designs giving people a choice of multiple different looks for their products either globally or individually. The main focus of course would be to make them compatible with current version templates that already exist.

Some cons to this come from the way zen-cart uses product types now, as you would have to have custom "document" and "music" versions of certain layouts.

Thoughts?