Is this a Purple Shades Issue? I'm stuck

I've created my main category, and then a subcategory. I have some products added but my products aren't showing on my main page. The only thing that will show is New Products or Featured Products. Is this not possible with the Purple Shades template? I would love to have my main page show my product listing instead of New Products.

My site is: http://www.foxxydiva.com/fashions

All help is appreciated. Thanks.

you need to turn this on from admin

I think its configuration/layout settings

change
Categories - Always Show on Main Page to 1
and then
Main Page - Opens with Category to whatever category number you wish to display

if you want to turn off any of the other lists 'o stuff, the Index Listing page controls the New/Featured/Specials/etc boxes on the homepage

If I've got it wrong, Ajeh should be by to correct me

Thanks TMC_Sherpa for your quick response.

When I make these changes, only 1 of my categories appears and it has all information listed vertically(product name, price, info).
What I'm looking for is the main page to list all the product images and below that would be the category names.

Can you check out this website as an example: http://www.findaflorist.org/sendflowers/

Compared to my site: www.foxxydiva.com

Thanks for your help.

What they show is the category images with the category name below each image. That is the standard behavior, when you have Opens with categories and "0" (the default" selected for the category.

You need to edit each of your categories and add an image, so they will show where you want them.

Ok, you're not ready for editing categories yet; what you have is a Dreamweaver picture of a site, not a Zen Cart site yet. It's a nice layout, but will take a bunch of template work to get it to function in that form.

Once you have a functioning site, it will be possible to put your images above each category in your menu as you wish. I have posted code for it recently; ask again when you are ready.

Never mind, I see you do have a site behind the DW entry page...

One comment:
I see you have sloped off the top right corners of your sideboxes. It looks good in principle, but you need to redo it with a black background so you don't get those half-white pixels at the edge. They need to be half-black pixels to look right.

Thanks for the reply gjh42.

I forgot to add /fashions to my web address: www/foxxydiva.com/fashions

I did notice the white ridges at the top of my category boxes. I will change the background on this when I get home.

Any idea on my main page product listing not showing issue above?

Thanks for all help.

In my Layout Settings I have:
Customer Greeting - Show on Index Page = 1
Categories - Always Show on Main Page = 1
Main Page - Opens with Category = 0
Categories - Always Open to Show SubCategories = 0

On my Categories/Products page I have Categories: 6 Products:0

I clicked on edit for one of my categories and added a Category Image: Upload to directory: Main Directory.

I still have no product listings on my home page. Am I still missing something?

Thanks.

As TMC_Sherpa said, set
Categories - Always Show on Main Page to 1
and then
Main Page - Opens with Category but set this to 0 so it will show all category images/titles at once.

Then add images to the category descriptions if you don't have them already.

Oops - you posted while I was looking around...

Maybe you're seeing a cached page? Try clearing your cache and see if that helps. It sounds like you have done everything right.

give this a try

change
Categories - Always Show on Main Page to 1
and then
Main Page - Opens with Category to 23, its the default for all products

Thanks so much everyone for your assistance.

I clicked on edit from my Categories/Products screen, below the description box I added a Category Image. The only place this image shows is if I go into the actual Category. It shows a small image at the top.
I also cleared my cache. Still nothing.
I set Categories-Always show on Main Page =1
Main Page opens with Category =23

Now my Featured Products has disappeared and the only thing showing in the box is HOME - There are no products to list in this category.

Are my categories right?

A question - what do you have these set at in Configuration > Images?

Small Image Width
Small Image Height
Heading Image Width
Heading Image Height
Subcategory Image Width
Subcategory Image Height

Try changing them one at a time and see what that does.

Thanks again for your help.

I've changed all image settings and still no product listing on my main page. I've also set all heights to 0. Still nothing.

Any other suggestions?

For some reason, on your /fashions/ home page, it is trying to display a product listing for the Home category (which of course doesn't exist) instead of displaying a category listing. No idea why that should be, and of course I can't see your PHP code in operation, just the HTML result of it.

PS - You keep saying "product listing on the main page"; the program is not set up to show all the products on the same page as the category listing. What it will do is show one selected category image for each category, with the cat name below it, in a grid on your main page. You can set the size of those images. This function appears to be bypassed somehow for you now.

To clarify the current situation, do you have these settings in Configuration > Layout Settings?

Categories - Always Show on Main Page = 1
Main Page - Opens with Category = 0
Categories - Always Open to Show SubCategories = 1

Skip 1-prod Categories = false

If not, try them and post back so we all know what's what.

Ive tried changing all these settings individually with no luck.

Is there something else I can try?

Also, should there be a tpl_main_page.php in my Purpleshades, commons folder? If so, there's not one there.

Are the settings still set as listed above? That is the best setup for them, so leave them that way.

I don't know if Purpleshades made any changes to tpl_main_page.php; it wouldn't be necessary if the function remains stock and there are no drastic layout changes.

Sorry for the confusion. What I'm trying to do is exactly as you mentioned above; showing 1 selected image for each category on the main page.
Ive tried changing all the settings you requested above with no luck. The only thing that shows is my greetings and featured products.

Is there something else I can try?

Also, should there be a tpl_main_page.php in my Purpleshades, commons folder? If so, there's not one there.

Yes, all the changes are still the same.

If a template makes no changes to a file, there will not be a copy of that file in the template directories. If Purpleshades was supposed to have a certain modified file and it was missing, ZC would use the default version of it... you are not getting default behavior here.

I'm getting out of my league here, but first try switching to the Classic template and see if it works correctly. If it does, the problem is somewhere in the Purpleshades files.
If not, you may be missing a file somewhere else. The best way to figure that out would be to compare your installed files to a freshly downloaded set of ZC files. On your pc, download a file comparison utility like Winmerge (you will need this anyway for future upgrades). Download and unzip the same version of ZC that you have installed. FTP your complete server /fashions/ directory, and compare that with the fresh set, files and folders. After accounting for any differences that are expected, any differences left need to be examined.