Creating custom features for products, similar to Product Manufacturer field

[binary]

Hi there. I have been working with Zen Cart for several months now and have managed to set up everything how I would like, much in thanks to the many helpful posts in this forum.

But the one thing I am having a real hard time wrapping my head around is the "bigger picture" when it comes to setting up products and categories. Ideally this is how I would like things to work:

1 - Have the ability to create custom product fields somewhere in the Zen Cart admin. These are not attributes that the customer can select, but are different features of the product. For example, it could be the country the product is made in, the type of material used, a price range, sku number, etc – anything you want.

2 - When adding a new product, these custom product fields would be available for selection in the same way the Products Manufacturer option is right now.

3 - If you define any of these custom fields for a product, they will appear on the product information page, along with the weight, quantity, manufacturer, etc.

4 - AND THE CHERRY ON TOP: Each of these custom-created "attributes" would also have their own sidebox OR a way to incorporate them into the Categories sidebox. This would allow customers to browse products based on the specific feature they are interested in.

Right now what I do is link each product to additional categories and write any of the additional features in the product description. This does the trick but is not ideal.

I am considering trying to clone the Product Manufacturer component as that seems to do what I want. Any idea if there is a better way to be doing all this? Am I missing something?!

Thanks!!

Lisa

[Homer2004]

hi binary
i have asked similar question and here few links to get you going
as sample look at the book type at http://www.jphuk.co.uk/zc/index.php?...roducts_id=482.
also here is my post http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...705#post510705.
here is a tutorial as how to duplicate the result at https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/i...hp?article=114.
i hope these help