Change product listing format (more columns!)

Just starting to build a website using zencart 1.5.
All the templates I see, show only one column for the product listings and however many rows that you designate in the admin settings. It doesn't seem to be a very efficient use of screen space!
Is there any admin setting that can be changed to give you more columns so that you would have maybe 3 or 4 columns across and maybe 5 rows, so that it is showing 15 or 20 items in your product listings??? (or even more) Many other shopping carts have this and I like it much better! I want to get as many products listed on one page, very clean, just the image, product name and the price.
Or is this all done in the actual code?
Any suggestions? If this has to be done with the code, has anybody else done this? any code examples. (I'm not a major coder)
I already know that you can designate the amount of product description text and image size etc...But Guess I'm really talking about the whole format of the product listings. Even putting image then product name below it and price below that, so stacking vertically instead of across the page horizontally!

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. http://www.moderndigsfurniture.com/modern-dining-tables.html

Thanks

Steve

Take a look in the addons link ...

Search for column grid

Thanks!
OK, so I see the add-on "Column Layout Grid for Product Listing". Will this work fine on version 1.5?
Anybody using this? Anywhere to see it in action? Does it make it so that the product name and price (etc) is listed underneath the product image (vertically?)
Thanks again!

Yes, Column Grid works in v1.5. It didn't need any updating. Many thousands of sites use it, though I don't have any links available.

It will simply make a grid with as many products across as you specify, and the elements arranged vertically. You can set the element order in admin > Configuration > Product Listing.

we use it

http://www.onyourbike.co.uk/

and i think it was this one for the divider dots

http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=666

bn

Site looks great now ...

Edit this:

resources/css/mdf.css

You might add this to the declaration p

text-align: justify;

I appreciate the replies!
So I just tried it. I have just a clean install of 1.5, and just wanted to try it out before I started doing anything else.
I'm just using the classic template (what it defaulted to) for testing purposes.
I put product_listing.php into the includes/modules/classic folder, then I put tpl_modules_product_listing.php into includes/templates/classic/templates folder. (I had to create a templates folder inside the classic folder) Then I copied the SQL commands and pasted them in the box in the install SQL patches area of the admin.
Neither "Layout Style" or "Columns per row" are showing up in the Admin -> Configuration -> Product Listing!
Thought I did everything right! Did I do something wrong?

Thanks!

You must have. The admin options are added by the SQL patch, so I'd assume you didn't do that part right.

When I did the SQL patch, it did say 'success' but when I looked at the admin-config-prod listing area, 'layout style' and 'columns per row' was not added.
So just now I tried to run the SQL patch again and I get "WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again." I tried both pasting in the commands and running the file. Same error.
Any ideas on what I should do now? I really want to use this grid view feature, so I need to check it out!
Thanks for your help!

Could someone who is familiar with this please help me out? Really hoping to get a reply to previous post!

Thanks!

There's really not much we can say without being in your admin & database. Your descriptions sound like you have done it right, but obviously either you made some unknown error or there is something about your site/server/whatever that is making it not work.

I've managed to install this - got the Layout Style and Columns Per Row options - but with it set to columns, regardless of the # in Columns Per Row, it's still a single column. I'd like the products in each category in a 3 x 3 grid, like the New Products layout. How do I change this?

My site is https://www.classy-trashy.com and I just installed 1.5.0

Oh, and changing to the classic template does nothing other than move the product name and price off to the right, which I don't want.

It appears you didn't install all of the files correctly. You are getting the output that is correct for column layout, but displayed with the stock rows formatting.

Check /includes/templates/ct_mine/templates/tpl_modules_product_listing.php, and /includes/modules/ct_mine/product_listing.php

Ah, there is also a product_listing.php.bak file that installation instructions were not included for. Added this to the modules directory, and now it works!!

Have to tinker with it now to see how to do 3 rows of 4 across....

product_listing.php.bak will do absolutely nothing as long as it is named like that. I'm not sure what it is, but my guess would be that it is a backup copy of the stock file. Any file with a .bak extension is definitely not meant to be installed to make the mod work as ordinarily designed.

You should not try to edit any version of product_listing.php or tpl_modules_product_listing.php to set rows and columns; that is what the admin settings are intended for. (There is no setting for "number of rows" as such, but you can set the number of products per page as a multiple of the number per row to get an even grid.)