Linking To Product Description Pages

[rdcast]

Like other shopping carts, Zen Cart provides a system for product images to be displayed on a page that are clickable links to their individually dedicated product description page. What I'm hoping to do is to circumvent that system, by placing product images in tables, where they are likewise clickable links to their individually dedicated product description page as provided by Zen Cart in its admin utility.

If this is possible, I need the ability to enter the products in Categories / Products in admin as usual, yet prevent the images from displaying on the general products listing page and then somehow place my html table with product images, where Zen Cart would normally display the product image listing, with each image in the table, linked to the Zen Cart provided product description pages, complete with images as usual.

[rstevenson]

As is often the case, "There's a mod for that."

Check out the Free Software Add Ons, link top-left of this forum. I used a mod called Single Listing Template, which besides making all the listing styles the same, gives me the ability to have more than one product on each line of the listing. (It includes the Column Layout Grid for Product Listing mod.) It wasn't immediately obvious how to style the listing to look like table cells, but I worked it out. See my retail site and click one of the categories to have a look at this mod in action.

Rob

[rdcast]

Thanks Rob,
I'm selling water filtration systems with their replacement filters and want to create tables with the replacement filters in the table cells along the top row and the associated water filtration systems in the cells along the side column, with checks within the body of the table cells to indicate which replacement filters goes with which water filtration system. If a customer wishes to purchase a replacement filter, I want them to be able to click on the particular filter they've located along the top row of the table, while those who have decided on which water filtration system to purchase, should be able to click on that particular system found along the side column. Again, the check marks will indicate the functional of each complete water filtration system.

So, I'm hoping to be able to link the the various products found along the top row, and along the side column, to the their individual product description page. If I can do this, I wont need the category menu. Any thoughts ?

[gjh42]

There is no mod that does anything like what you are asking for here. You will need to create a new page, probably a define page so you can use PHP if you need to, or maybe an ez-page will work. You can make up a static HTML table with the appropriate names and links in each cell; this would have to be manually maintained if your products change. If products don't change frequently, this may be the easiest solution. If you need the table to automatically follow your available products, you will need some PHP coding and possibly a new database table to store correspondences.
The correspondences may be able to be handled by linking replacement filter products to a category for each system they fit. Then you could look up the products_to_categories fields and populate cells accordingly.

[rdcast]

Thanks Glenn,
So I should be able to link html described images to product description pages? How do I find out what the link addresses are and how do I keep Zen Cart from listing the product images?

[gjh42]

There's no "keeping ZC from listing" anything here; you will have to build everything that outputs, so you have total control. For the link addresses, just go to each page you want to link to and copy/paste the URL in the address bar into your HTML.

[rdcast]

in admin, shouldn't I be able to eliminate the columns that would display Zen Cart generated product listings? I know I can change the number of products horizontally, but can I put the value to zero to eliminate all product images from showing?

[gjh42]

This has nothing to do with ZC admin. You will need to build a totally custom HTML page content for your table.

[rdcast]

The html part isn't a problem, I just don't want ZC to impose its normal product listing.

[gjh42]

If you don't have any links that point to product listing pages, you won't see them.