Featured items or Special Items REFUSE to display on main / home page

I am going out of my mind. I can not get the Featured Items to display on the Home page.

I have enabled it in the Index Listing area but it does nothing.

Specials don't work either.

The only thing that seems to work are new products.

The standalone featured products page works and shows all the items but they won't show up on the home page.

I have literally tried everything but I have had no luck.

I can't seem to get it to display more than 8 items on the main page either. I have increased the max value to 12 (4 on each row) but it makes no difference. I'm not sure if these two problems are related or not. Honestly this one is a much lower priority than just getting the featured items to show up.

What could it be? What am I missing???

Ver. 1.3.8a

Can't see your site...
Post a link to it

the site is http://www.allisonizu.com/store/

Its currently displaying new items on the main page because the others don't work.

I'm not sure what you can tell by looking at the site so if there is a config or a source file anyone would like to see please let me know and I'll post that too.

You appear to have 1 Special and no Featured Products ...

Have you tried to add more ...

No there should be 9 featured items.

They all show up when I go to http://www.allisonizu.com/store/index.php?main_page=featured_products

They are all listed in the back end under featured items.

How did you determine there weren't any? Maybe thats my problem, I have something in the wrong place?

What setting do you have for the Configuration ... Maximum Values ...

Maximum Display of Featured Products - Main Page
Number of featured products to list on main page

Maximum Values
Title Value Action
Address Book Entries 5
Search Results Per Page 20
Prev/Next Navigation Page Links 5
Products on Special 9
New Products Module 8
Upcoming Products 10
Manufacturers List - Scroll Box Size/Style 3
Manufacturers List - Verify Product Exist 1
Music Genre List - Scroll Box Size/Style 3
Record Company List - Scroll Box Size/Style 3
Length of Record Company Name 15
Length of Music Genre Name 15
Length of Manufacturers Name 15
New Product Reviews Per Page 6
Random Product Reviews for SideBox 1
Random New Products for SideBox 3
Random Products On Special for SideBox 2
Categories To List Per Row 3
New Products Listing- Number Per Page 10
Best Sellers For Box 10
Also Purchased Products 6
Recent Purchases Box- NOTE: box is disabled 6
Customer Order History List Per Page 10
Maximum Display of Customers on Customers Page 20
Maximum Display of Orders on Orders Page 20
Maximum Display of Products on Reports 20
Maximum Categories Products Display List 10
Products Attributes - Option Names and Values Display 10
Products Attributes - Attributes Controller Display 30
Products Attributes - Downloads Manager Display 30
Featured Products - Number to Display Admin 10
Maximum Display of Featured Products - Main Page 12
Maximum Display of Featured Products Page 10
Products Listing- Number Per Page 10
Random Featured Products for SideBox 2
Maximum Display of Specials Products - Main Page 12
New Product Listing - Limited to ... 0
Maximum Display of Products All Page 10
Maximum Display of Language Flags in Language Side Box 3
Maximum File Upload Size 2048000
Allowed Filename Extensions for uploading jpg,jpeg,gif,png,eps,cdr,ai,pdf,tif,tiff,bmp,zip
Maximum Orders Detail Display on Admin Orders Listing 0
Maximum PayPal IPN Display on Admin Listing 20
Maximum Display Columns Products to Multiple Categories Manager 3
Maximum Display EZ-Pages 20

Could you switch to the Classic Template and see if anything changes on your site?

Sorry ... never mind ... I see you did not use the templates and overrides for your site and have overwritten all of the default settings so we cannot test this ... :blink:

Yeah that was before I came in to this. If I had built it from scratch myself I'm sure I wouldn't have had this problem. I have tried to swap out the template with generic ones manually but I haven't had any success with that.

If you know of any particular files I should I should try to put in place I'll be happy to try that again.

Using the Developers Tool Kit in the Tools ... Developers Tool Kit ...

Insert in the bottom input box:
featured_products

select Catalog ... click Search ...

Search the page for:
tpl_modules_featured_products.php

Is anything commented out or do you not find it in the files:
tpl_index_categories.php
tpl_index_default.php
tpl_index_product_list.php

in the file:
tpl_modules_featured_products.php

do you see this code:
include(DIR_WS_MODULES . zen_get_module_directory(FILENAME_FEATURED_PRODUCTS_MODULE));

is it commented out?

That was it!!!! It was commented out.

Its now displaying the featured items! Although... the images are much smaller than the they should be.

Is that something I can change in a template or is that a CSS thing?

Thank you so much for your help!

You appear to be using these monster sized images of:
329.54 KB (337,450 bytes)
650px × 1,250px (scaled to 42px × 80px)

What you really want to do is have small, medium and large images ...

The small images are used for the listings and sideboxes ...

The medium image is used on the Product _info page ...

The large image is used when you click the medium image on the Product _info page ...

You should really read through the Tutorials/FAQs on images and see how this is does so your pages are not so huge ...

This seems to be hard coded too. Any idea where I should look to fix it?

What seems to be hard coded? Images that are too big? :unsure:

Take a big image and resample it to a smaller size ... add that as the Product Image ...

For example, take the image:
/images/products/kolohe-capri.jpg

rename it and copy that to the directory:
/images/large/products/kolohe-capri_LRG.jpg

Now take the image:
/images/products/kolohe-capri.jpg

and resample/resize it to a thumb nail about:
140px × 263px

Edit the Product products_id 220 for KOLOHE CAPRI: Skinny Capri and change the image to be the new smaller image:
/images/products/kolohe-capri.jpg

Take the LARGE image and resample/resize to a new image for the medium image:
225px × 422px

rename that image and put that image in:
/images/medium/products/kolohe-capri_MED.jpg

Now you have 3 images ... a small, medium and large image for the Product ...

You can load the Product image when you add/edit the Product in the Zen Cart Admin ...

The other images are loaded via FTP ...

No, I get that. I'm working on the different image sizes.

The problem is how they are displayed on the home page. Note the new items on the home page are larger and below that are the featured items with much smaller images.

I need the featured items to display just like the new ones on that home page.

I've looked at the image size settings and they are identical for new and featured. Thats why I figured it was hard coded.

Not really sure based on the View Source ...

But check your settings in the Configuration ... Images ...

Image - Featured Products Width
Default = 100
Image - Featured Products Height
Default = 80

and all of the other settings ...

Yeah that was the first thing I checked.

They are currently set to those defaults.

The new items image settings are identical. Thats why I don't get why they look different.

Maybe a designer type can look at your site as I see the settings for the image sizes but they are not the stated sizes ... :lookaroun

I'll figure it out. I really appreciate all your help!

This is a much lesser issue than my original one.