Hi all,
I worked with Zen cart for some while & delighted with its functionality. Recently I created a site which contained several thousand products with a category structure 5 deep & found the system was slow, now I intend to create a new 1 but it has potentially 500,000 products with a 4 or 5 deep category structure.
I do like the self populating multi drop down tabs add on which uses jquery to drill down into the categories however in my experience it would mean duplicated categories many times & therfore slow down the site...or maybe I am justing doing it wrong.
So using the vehicle scenario often used for demonstrating I will show how I think it would look.
Vehicle type (Main top level category)
Saloon
Hatchback
SUV
Van
Manufactures (2nd level)
Ferrari
Bentley
Aston Martin
GM
Ford
Part Type (3rd level)
Engine & drive
Braking & suspension
Bodywork
Trim
Products could go directly into 3rd level with attributes use for colour ect were applicable.
Now, 2 things happen here:
1st
For each vehicle type, I would need a manufacturer category
For each manufacturer I would need a part type category
So if I had 10 vehicle types I would need to duplicate the manufacturers categories x 10 & would need to duplicate the part type for each manufacture (example say 50)
So I would end up with 500 duplicate categories, this would not be 3rd normal form. I saring using ExcelVBA to create the structure like this but it does not seem right having so many duplicated nested categories.
2nd
There is of course a manufacturer table in Zen Cart but if I don't use it at the top tier, like my example above then I don't think it would work without some restructuring espescially if I want self populating drop down menus.
So assuming (that's a big assumption) my category structure is correct & the only way of doing it using categories, then I was going to add to add tables similar to manufactures but for vehicle type & part type. This would need a file similar to product product music extra to tie the new table together. There could be even tables for part, as most parts will be the same for each vehicle. Of course SQL data would need to be modified to collate data for viewing & new jquery would be required to self populate each drop down from new tables ect ect.
So eventually my question......Is there a better way or, or am I missing something with the original category structure? Maybe even product types is the answer, hence why I am asking before carrying out what appears to be a large re jig of Zen Cart without justification.
Any help appreciated with thanks
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