Feature product box - main page with categories

I'm trying to configure the Featured Products box that displays on the main page. I have two primary problems.

1. I don't want it to display on the store's main page (no category selected). I want it to display only when a category has been selected. Currently, I can control it to display on both or neither.

2. When in a category, Featured products are only displaying if they are located in a direct sub-category. They're not displaying if they're in a sub-sub or sub-sub-sub category. I need the featured products in all of the subcategories to display.

Here are my settings:
Show Featured Products on Main Page : 0
Show Featured Products on Main Page - Category with SubCategories : 2
Filter Product Listing for Current Top Level Category When Enabled : 0

If I switch off "Show Featured Products on Main Page - Category with SubCategories", the featured products disappear from the main page and also when in a category. I would have thought "Show Products on Main Page" would control the store's main page.

Any help is appreciated!

Can anybody offer some clues here?

Can I display the featured box only when in a category? But not on the store's main page?

Can I display all of the selected category's featured products, including those in sub-sub categories?

In the Products Listing ...

Filter Product Listing for Current Top Level Category When Enabled
Filter the products when Product Listing is enabled for current Main Category or show products from all categories?
0= Filter Off 1=Filter On

Also set to 0:

Show Featured Products on Main Page
Show Featured Products on Main Page
0= off or set the sort order

If you look at my first post, you'll see that those settings have already been made. But, it's not working. I'm not sure what to look into to see what's going wrong here.

Flip to Classic ... does it work?

Flip to Classic ... and carefully rename the directory:
/includes/templates/classic

to read:
/includes/templates/classic_HIDE

Do NOT go to the Tools ... Layout Boxes ...

Does it work now?

Nope, same situation in all cases.

The main page shows a random selection of all featured products. I want this to show none.

In a category, the featured products are only from the immediate sub-categories -- not any sub-sub categories.

I've read other threads about this -- and none of them went anywhere. Is it for sure working differently on someone else's set up?

...That was an unfortunate bit of skimming on my part -- I read your "Do NOT go to the layout box controller..." and read "Go to the..." so I went into tools/layout boxes right after switching to classic_hide. I'm smart. :smartass: Is this only going to mess up my Classic settings?

edited
By the way, I verified it wasn't working correctly after switching to classic_HIDE and before going to layout boxes. So, my lapse in reading skills doesn't affect our situation here.

I verified that it works correctly on a new cart. So, we must have messed something up with our contributions.

We have a combination of community mods and our own. So, can someone give me a clue where to start looking? Or what the problem could be?

Any help appreciated, cause I spent all last night trying to find something broken somewhere but couldn't. I'm stuck!

I searched 'featured' in the developers tool kit, and looked through all the files that returned a match. I didn't see any alterations that should be affecting this.

What other files should I take a look at?

magicpants:

...That was an unfortunate bit of skimming on my part -- I read your "Do NOT go to the layout box controller..." and read "Go to the..." so I went into tools/layout boxes right after switching to classic_hide. I'm smart. :smartass: Is this only going to mess up my Classic settings?

edited
By the way, I verified it wasn't working correctly after switching to classic_HIDE and before going to layout boxes. So, my lapse in reading skills doesn't affect our situation here.

Peek in the layout_boxes table via phpMyAdmin ...

See if you have anything for the layout_template called: classic_HIDE

If so ... toss those ...

They aren't "hurting anything" but the idea is to be able to use classic_HIDE when set to Classic and rename the directory /includes/templates/classic to /classic_HIDE so you are forcing the template_default ...

Have you Beyond Compare from scootersoftware.com ... this is a great program to compare your files to the clean Zen Cart files and even compare your template files to the clean template_default files ...

I've used beyond compare before, but I ended up sticking with WinMerge. I've already compared all the files I could think of with WinMerge -- all the files I found by searching for "featured" in developer's toolkit. There were no alterations in any of those files that would affect this (as far as I could tell).

My question remains... can someone please point me to other files to look at? Or any idea on a possible cause for this problem with the featured products on the mainpage (NOT the featured sidebox)?

Here's a list of the files I compared (no admin-side files):
/includes/database_tables.php
/includes/filenames.php
/includes/functions/featured.php
/includes/functions/functions_general.php
/includes/functions/functions_lookups.php
/includes/init_includes/init_special_funcs.php
/includes/modules/featured_products.php
/includes/modules/pages/featured_products/header_php.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_featured_products_default.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_index_categories.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_index_default.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_index_product_list.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_modules_featured_products.php
/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_modules_products_featured_listing.php

Okay, the problem doesn't lie in the templates -- I wanted to make sure I didn't somehow make a change to my default_template files at some point. So, I copied over fresh files, removed my own template files, and voila -- the problem is still there.

What next...

Yeah I know this isn't the most exciting thread, but I vow it will just keep growing until this problem is resolved! :schmoll:

I discovered the featured box on the main page (when no cats are selected) is actually being generated by tpl_index_categories, not tpl_index_default. As far as I understand, tpl_index_default affects the main page when no cats are selected.

So, does that mean that it thinks a category is selected when on the main page? I put an if statement around the appropriate code in tpl_index_categories to stop it from displaying on the main page :

if ( $current_page!='index' || (int)$cPath>0 ) { ?>

The problem still remains that it's only propagating the featured box with products from the immediate subcategory, none of the sub-sub or sub-sub-sub categories.

Any help on this issue?

So, the only problem left is that the featured products are only displaying the products in an immediate subcategory, but not sub-subcats, etc.

I thought maybe the ajax yahootreemenu sidebox was affecting it, but i tried using the normal category sidebox and no change.

I don't know where or what to look for anymore and I've run out of momentum -- any nudge would be really helpful.

Okay, I still have this problem and I'm completely stuck. I don't know what to do next. Any advice or suggestions will be very much appreciated.

To recap: our featured products are only displaying the products from an immediate sub-category, not any products in a sub-sub category. We've verified that this is not a problem in the template files. And, I've searched for all instances of "featured" in any files and I can't see any alterations to these files that could cause this problem.

I'm using the ajax "yahoo tree menu" category sidebox -- not sure if that could be the culprit.

I don't know where to look next -- any particular files I should take a look at?

Will somebody please help? I will pay you for your time. I just have to get this fixed and I am lost on what steps to take next.

Were you able to get this done?

No, not at all. Still stuck and I'm not sure what else to look into.

Might peek at the variable $this_is_home_page

We do have a change to this, in the file:
/includes/int_includes/init_category_path.php

Change the last line to read:

$this_is_home_page = ($current_page=='index' && (!isset($_GET['cPath'])) && (!isset($_GET['manufacturers_id'])) && (!isset($_GET['typefilter'])) );

This will tell you when you are on the real home page for your site, when true ...

Thanks for the help Ajeh, but I'm a little confused... what is this supposed to do?

I changed the last line, but don't notice anything different. What am I looking for?

Just to make sure we're both on the same page, here's a short descript of my problem:

To recap: our featured products are only displaying the products from an immediate sub-category, not any products in a sub-sub category. We've verified that this is not a problem in the template files. And, I've searched for all instances of "featured" in any files and I can't see any alterations to these files that could cause this problem.

It sounded like you were needed to also know when you were on the immeditate "home" page of your site ... and that is what that variable is for ...

On the depth of locating featured products I have not looked into what all it would take to do this ...

Currently, it goes down one level ... not multiple levels, which is what you are needing ...