Redirect Category to External Website

I'm trying to figure out how to redirect a category to an external site. I've seen the post on how to redirect a category to another category and not sure if a modified version of that code would work. I tried .htaccess, but because the category page isn't an html page it doesn't work because it doesn't read past the ? in the url... index.php?main_page=index&cPath=344

Any ideas???

Thanks in advance,
J

Where do you want to do this redirection? If the category is supposed to redirect offsite, what kind of Zen Cart content does the category have? Any? If you want to make an external link from the categories sidebox, you can do it with a "heading" in Categories Dressing.

The site is https://www.musclemotors.com, the category is "Procharger", I would like to redirect it to prochargerdealer.com (one of our sites as well). There isn't any content in the "Procharger" category.

Happy to do this any way possible?

Thanks for the quick response.

J

Please tell me someone has an idea how to do this? :yes:

Thanks!
J

If you have no Procharger content on your site that that "category" leads to, and if you want the link to go from the categories sidebox, Categories Dressing will do what you want. Instead of having a dummy category, create a heading for the category that should appear below Prochargers, with a link to the other site. Further explanation is in the readme (though the current published version does not mention making links, you can easily do it by including the link code in the define).

I downloaded the mod, can you explain what I would add to the define for the link. My knowledge of php is very limited.

Thank you in advance.

J

One more thing, I added the mod to the site just to check... and I do not want to change the way the Categories Sidebox looks (with the rollover's, etc) - so, are you sure using this mod is the way to go? Isn't there an easier way to make the Category and Dummy category that links to an external URL?

Thanks,
Jon

Why not just put the URL into the Category Description and encourage them to click on that ?

DrByte... not a bad idea, but my boss wanted it to redirect.

I came up with a solution by fooling around. I added the Ultimate SEO mod to the site and added a redirect at the end of the htaccess file and it seems like everything is working.

Thanks for the responses guys. I need to learn more php. =)

Have a good week!
Jon

NOTE: by sending the customer to a different website when they click a certain category, you're immediately losing the sale on any other shopping they've done in other categories on your site. Be careful about what you're doing. Anytime you send customers to another site you're effectively telling them you don't want their business.

If you must do a redirect straight from the category menu, you can add target="_blank" to the <a> tag so it opens in another window/tab. This leaves your original session and page open.
Categories Dressing doesn't need to change the way your sidebox looks; you can turn off any features you don't want and restyle as desired, leaving the new heading/link.

Totally understand and agree. But the site we are redirecting to is our site as well. So the only real problem is the shopping carts aren't linked together. This is a temporary solution, as importing the products using Easy Populate mod takes time when the product has so many attributes because I haven't been able to import the attributes as well.

J

Apsona purports to have better attribute handling than EP

Ive done this before by making a new category, making one product within it (and setting it so categories with only one product go straight to it) and then setting up an instant html redirect within the product description. You have to make the product description code within phyMyadmin other wise when you try and 'preview' your product listing, it will redirect before you get to click 'OK' to approve it.