How to sell items not listed out website?

[stevesh]

Zencart has no way of knowing of the existence of products that aren't in the database, so I can't think of a way to do what you want to do, without entering the items in a separate category and 'hiding' that category from visitors. (Or maybe creating one hidden catch-all product with whatever number and type of attributes to cover all the possibilities you'd need, then add that product to the cart.)

[Dashizna]

I thought there was a way to edit orders and add items to the order?? So the only items you can add are the ones in the database?

[stevesh]

Correct. As I said, Zencart (and the edit order mod(s)) have no way of knowing a product exists unless it's in the database.

[Dashizna]

So in the edit orders there isn't just like a note section of something we can write in and add it to the order like put the price and a description in.??

[schoolboy]

No there isn't... The whole purpose of a CMS is to contain all data pertinent to the site.

Not having data in the database is like having an imaginary product in your stock-room.

I know your industry - we are working on a site that lists ALL ArcticCat parts and ALL Hot-Products Accessories. There are about 120,000 of them. We are using a variety of tools to accumulate this data, composit it in spreadsheets, re-configure it for EasyPopulate import and then dump it into the database.

(Its been estimaged to be a 250-hour job, and we are about half-way through it.)

... so... there are no short cuts.

PS: that database, once compiled, will not be for sale!