Manufacturer Categories

[Ptool]

Thanks to those in advance willing to help

I had a request to have a manufacturer's categories page. The problem being if a customer doesn't know a manufacturer they can search the site normally, find a product and proceed as normal.

But we have had a few requests from customers, that they only want to see things from a specific manufacturer. Now we already have the Manf. Links at the bottom, but they didn't want to search thru 15 pages to find the item they were looking for. Understandably so.

Is there a way to maybe have a second set of categories, that is manufacturer base, then it breaks down into manufacturer sub categories and so forth.

I have seen the second set of categories, before, but I want them to be the same items, but not have to enter them 2 or 3 or 4 times in the categories.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[bunyip]

Can be done with a little custom coding for your category tree and category sidebox. If you build a parallel category structure you can simply cross-link all your products from your 'regular' category tree into a 'manufacturers' category tree. I've done it for a couple of clients in the past. If you take a look at jerusalembaskets dot com you'll see an example: the gifts by Holiday, Theme or Occasion, Israeli Wine and Gourmet Products are all top-level categories, with each branch displayed in its own sidebox.

[Ptool]

I have figured out a basic way of doing it with the category tree, and using EZ pages. Not the best solution but it works for now.

Is there anyway to tell the Manufacturer scroll box that comes standard with Zen Cart to pull the Manufacturer link that is designated, instead of pulling all the items that the manufacturer, so when a customer clicks the Manufacturer name it takes them to the Manufacturer Site?