Co-Mingling Categories?...Not cool.

I am setting up a site for a client, originally the categories were displaying properly. I gave them admin access to begin to get the feel as they will ultimately be running the site. All of the Products were input by the client and showed in their respective categories. However (in the past week) the categories have sor tof mixed together, they appear correctly in the Admin section but when clicked from the category menu i.e. id=65 they're all just thrown in together.

I'm sure a change was made somewhere, but I don't think I personally did it. Is there a setting to just mix and match categories?...if so how the hell can i turn it off :D

ZC v 1.3.8

Mods:
Wholesale (don't remember the name but it worked fine after installing)
Stock By Attributes (also fine after installing)
Google Checkout (I didn't look before adding this mod manually[not just replacing files]...and it may well be that this caused it)

This site is still in production/sandbox

Update: found this email from client:

"Ive f*d it up. Been trying to find the setting to keep the images from shuffling and now categories are mixed and shuffling. Im lost."

so the Google Mod prolly didn't mess it up rather it's a setting in admin.

I know that placing both subcategories and products in a category can cause some strange behavior. You might check to see if the client has done that.

I'm not sure what 'images shuffling' means, though.

Theres only 4 categories and no sub cats. Men's Women's Youth and Misc. - they're all Tshirts so no need for sub categories. I'm not entirely sure what image shuffling means either except I think that they intended to have the product images in the same order every time and not randomized in the category view...it caused some images to show twice on multiple pages...again I'm sure that's a setting.

I don't think it's a setting, and we may need to see the site to figure this out, but each time you click on, say, Men's, it should show the same items in the same order every time. There's no randomness built in to the product listing. New Products and Featured Products, though, there is. Is that the section that's giving him trouble?

I remember a post from some time ago where the New or Featured Products area was showing duplicates of the same product on some pages, but I can't find it just now.

pm'd URL

I've seen the site, and what's happening is this:

When a category is selected, it shows products in a three-wide configuration in the product listing, but it doesn't show the same products in the same order each time, or products from the chosen category at all. Clicking on Men's may show some Men's and some Women's products, or, in one instance, all Women's. The category id's are correct, in that when a Women's product is shown, the id is 66, and when a Men's product is shown, 65.

I suggested that some mod has overwritten the product listing display file(s) from the Column Grid mod and suggested he re-install that mod's files. Anyone have another idea?

stevesh - FROM PM:

junkbox:

The product Id's are up there because the installer from the host auto populates the database with example products, I don't like that either, but there was no option in Fantastico to not add sample products.

Let me check but I don't think that mod is installed at all.

I know it was a change that the client made, but I don't know where... he wouldn't have hard coded any changes though. lemme see on that mod.

Zencart won't show columns in the product listing without that mod or custom coding, so, ...

If you go to Admin - Configuration - Product Listing and there is a selection for Product Listing - Layout Style, the mod is installed.

Yeah.. i didn't think i had it installed, which i hadn't (see b4.jpg)... maybe I changed that somewhere else.. or I hard coded the column thing somewhere I don't recall.
I did however reinstall the mod (see afta.jpg) but there's no change to the wonky category mix up.

bizump.

I have simialr problem, but with subcategories... see
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134673

OK, I'm going to try a different approach on this.

What tpl pages (MY TEMPLATE or otherwise) are loaded when the category link is clicked?

another forum user has concluded:

Ok I switched it to classic template to see if it was still broke....yup
but I sorta know what is going on,,,,kind of. The 12 images showing when on your template are NOT the products for that category, they are the new products for august centerbox. When in classic template and in a category it does NOT display your products in the category at all, only the new products centerbox. So basically you broke the products listing page someplace......

anyone?

OK.

For posterity and for closure.

Thanks for the help as well.

stevesh concluded that a mod had broken the product display.

I argued that no hardcode changes had been made to the core files, and that the problem was caused by configuration settings in the admin CP.

another user (via PM) concluded that the product listing had been somehow broken.

and while I maintained that no core files had been changed to cause the issue, he noticed that under the classic template that the listings being shown were not in fact the category product listings at all, but rather the Whats_new listings.

So, I removed the What's New listings from product listing pages and indeed the page was blank. Why?

well...50 hours later, lo and behold that in the admin panel, *product listing

Display Product Image, Display Product Manufacturer Name , Display Product Model, Display Product Name..etc were all set to 0

that would explain alot. :clap:

I was pulling database dumps to look for problems, pulled the admin access table, replaced and remodded all of the tpl's responsible for product_listing, checked double checked, and it was a setting in admin after all. This is truly a brilliant piece of software. i guess i expect things to be harder than they would seem... but this is straight forward as hell. I like it.

Yipee!