Add Featured Products from Product Entry Page?

Hi Guys

I am developing a Zen Cart for a customer who supplied me with a Monster Theme. The theme uses Featured Products to layout the front page with 6 large product thumbs.

I'm trying to work out the best way of choosing which products should show on the front page. Ideally I would like there to be, say, 20 products that randomly show within this layout.

But the main issue at the moment is how a product is marked as a Featured Product. It seems like a strange system. You have to scroll through the list and select the products? What if there are 100's or 1000's of products?

Can't you just have a check box on the product entry page? Or at very least, have the list searchable or make it so I can enter the product ID?

If I am missing the point here, please point it out. It's late and I'm not drunk ;)

When you click on 'New Product' in the Admin - Catalog - Featured Products area, there is a search box.

Also, before you click on 'New Product', at the bottom of the right column, there's a link that says 'Product ID to be Manually Added as a Featured' - click that to add by ID.

You'd have to write code to have a box on the product entry page.

I work by the UPC codes (aka model numbers in zen cart) is there anyway to change the Product ID to be Manually Added to accept the model numbers instead of the ID numbers.

Thanks for your help!
Mona