Redirecting a subcategory to an external site

[DSCARMS]

I have set up zencart v1.3.8 on my domain www.dscgunstore.com with a Gloss Black template. I have setup 3 main categories on my main page. The main page will have images for the Categories and some minimal text. The category named Firearms has numerous subcategories and further subcategories without any products because I wish to have an external link to my (another) webstore that was setup by one of my distributors for the product inventory counts and final purchase.
I have seen the option in the EZ Pages for an external URL redirect and would like to be able to modify my Category and Subcategories to be able to do individual redirects off site to different URLs at my distributor without doing a site wide php change. The other two main page categories of products will not be needing to be redirected off site. Please feel free to request any additional info. Any ideas will be deeply appreciated!!
Am new to forum and zencart so please bear with me. Thanks!!

[gjh42]

If what you want is even possible, it would require significant custom coding. You can probably set up the custom code for the links easily enough, but actually getting it to function with the remote site being the real store is probably not practical, if you want the customer to be able to buy more than one item at a time.

THink about how you would feel, while shopping for a gun, if you clicked on a category or product and suddenly found yourself on another website completely... sounds pretty offputting to me.

[misty]

I have set up zencart v1.3.8

NOT a good idea....Latest version of zencart is
Zencart 139h

[DSCARMS]

To Black Belt - There is a redirect link going off site to my store at my distributor that already exists on my website under the EZpages Important Links sidebox called "Online Firearms Catalog". This redirects current customers to my store at my distributor and they can purchase as many or as much as they wish to purchase because they can surf around once they are at that site. It is the suggestions of my customers from my other site www.dscarmsinc.com to make the new site www.dscgunstore.com more manufacturer product category specific. So I don't think or feel it will be offputting to my customers since they made the suggestions. The question remains - exactly how can it be accomplished if it can be accomplished? Thanks for the help, reply and suggestion.

To Misty - Thanks for the reply - will upgrading to the latest version 1.3.9 - accomplish what I would like to do?

If there is another way to accomplish it - I am open to all suggestions!!
Thanks for the help!!

[stevesh]

Not within Zencart, I don't think. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're trying to do, but I still would wonder what would happen if I, as a customer, wanted to buy something from a 'local' category, and something from a 'remote' category - two separate checkouts ?

One possible kludge would be to create an EZpage for each remote category, using an external link to the remote site, and place the EZ page sidebox right under the Categories sidebox, remove the header and play with margins and padding so the two looked like the same sidebox.

[DSCARMS]

Thanks for the reply Stevesh.
The three main categories on my main page www.dscgunstore.com have different legal and shipping requirements if purchased. Multiple purchase checkout within the same category can be done without any problem and in the same shopping cart. The multiple checkout issue between different categories and/or subcategories is basically moot because of the different legal and shipping requirements within each category. Basically the "Black powder" category and the "NFA" category products are done in-house and the products in the "Firearms" are to redirected to other webstore of mine that is at one of my distributors. The products purchased in the "Firearms" category are shipped to my physical store for the customer to pickup.

Basically I want to have the categories out of the sideboxes and on the center of the main page - but to be able to automatically redirect to my other offsite webstore. The option in the EZpages (in the sidebox) to automatically redirect to an internal or an external url is present when setting up the EZpage in the admin area. I would like to get the main categories and/or subcategories in the admin area to be able to allow a redirect to another url.

Thanks for the input and will attempt it to see if it will work - customers requests to simplify and streamline the categories to go directly to the products they are interested in purchasing are the reason why I am trying to do this. Again I am open to any suggestions on how to accomplish it. Thanks to all.

[DSCARMS]

Anybody know or have any idea what I would have to change in the php code to accomplish a redirect in the categories and subcategories admin area for the main page and not be in the sideboxes? Thanks to all for any suggestions.

[DSCARMS]

Basically I want to have the categories out of the sideboxes and on the center of the main page - but to be able to automatically redirect to my other offsite webstore similar to the option in the EZPages admin area. The option in the EZpages (in the sidebox) will automatically redirect to an internal or an external url that is present when setting up the EZpage in the admin area. I would like to get the main categories and/or subcategories in the admin area to be able to allow a redirect to another url.

History is as follows:
I have set up zencart v1.3.8 on my domain www.dscgunstore.com with a Gloss Black template. I have setup 3 main categories on my main page. The main page will have images for the Categories and some minimal text. The category named Firearms has numerous subcategories and further subcategories without any products because I wish to have an external link to my (another) webstore that was setup by one of my distributors for the product inventory counts and final purchase.

The three main categories on my main page www.dscgunstore.com have different legal and shipping requirements if purchased. Multiple purchase checkout within the same category can be done without any problem and in the same shopping cart. The multiple checkout issue between different categories and/or subcategories is basically moot because of the different legal and shipping requirements within each category. Basically the "Black powder" category and the "NFA" category products are done in-house and the products in the "Firearms" are to redirected to other webstore of mine that is at one of my distributors. The products purchased in the "Firearms" category are shipped to my physical store for the customer to pickup.

I have seen the option in the admin for EZ Pages for an external URL redirect. I would like to be able to modify my Category and Subcategories to be able to do individual automatic same page redirects off site to different URLs from at my distributor. The other two main page categories of products will not be needing to be redirected off site. It is the suggestions of my customers from my other site www.dscarmsinc.com to make my new website www.dscgunstore.com more manufacturer product category specific by way of a redirect.

Anybody know or have any idea what I would have to change in the program php code to accomplish a redirect in the categories and subcategories admin area for the main page and not be in the sideboxes? Will upgrading to the latest version 1.3.9 - accomplish what I would like to do?

My expertise is limited to installing and making only minor modifications to the current php program code.

Please feel free to request any additional info. Any ideas will be deeply appreciated!!

Thanks for the help!!

[stevesh]

I think you're looking at enough custom coding that you may have to pay someone to do it, but I'm not a programmer, so I could be wrong.

Did you consider my 'kludge' in post #5 ?

[gjh42]

Thinking out loud... If you use the ez-page external link function to hold the desired links, you could tweak the category listing to check for one of your special category ids, and if one of them (or the Firearms top category) is being handled, go to an alternate output where you have a zen_ez_pages_link(##) with the ## set according to the current subcategory. You would need a method of storing the correspondences between subcategories and ez-page ids. A database table would work, but it would probably be easier to define a constant with array content that could be evaluated at runtime.