Information about Intelligent All, Featured, and Specials Links

[macbookpro]

Hello everyone!

I've been following ZenCart since 1.3.7 and have used 1.3.9, 1.5.0, 1.5.1 (live shop), and recently 1.5.3(hotfix - TEST SHOP).

I've searched the forums for "intelligent links for featured, new, and specials", "featured link", "specials link", etc...and nothing came up.

A couple of things that have always bothered me (and I had neither the skills nor time to tackle) are:

1 - All Products, Featured, New, and Specials links lack the intelligence of the Best Sellers sidebox...they only sort by the entire catalog.

2- Best Sellers can't be displayed in the center box area as a listing

Please correct me if I am wrong about either of these.

The center area boxes are intelligent enough to do a sort by the current category/subcategory and a store owner can choose how many of those products show.

What if your site has over 100,000 products (like mine)? I have categories with over 500 products in them.

If I set my center box to display 12 products, that's all the user can see unless they refresh the page and let randomizer refill the box with the next 12 products. There is no way to select the next 12 products in the box!

If I am on the home page and click All Products, I expect it to find all products in all categories of the catalog. However, if I am in a category which has several subcategories, and click on "All Products", I have always expected it to pull all of that category / subcategory products...not every product in the catalog!

The Best Sellers sidebox smartly selects and displays products from the current selected category/subcategory.

I know the Advanced Search can retrieve a list like this...I just want that intelligence incorporated into the Featured, All Products, New, and Specials links.

I am a novice programmer at best and will be looking for a solution to both of these issues as I believe it would enhance the usefulness and "Zenness" of the program.

I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction or let me know if there is some plug in available to address these issues.

[lat9]

I recently re-released "Best Sellers - Reloaded" (http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=419) to support the Zen Cart v1.5.x series. That plugin displays the best sellers in a center-box in a manner similar to featured, new and specials.