Display Products and Sub-Categories in Top Level Category Page

I originally posted this in the wish list at this link: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66408

However, there may already be a way to do this and I just don't know where the option is or how to easily change the script.

When customers click on a top level link, such as sports, the customer would then see the sub-categories, soccer, tennis, football, etc, and below would see all sporting goods products. In effect, the sub-categories are a way of filtering the main products. This is to counter the bounce rate from customers who somehow miss clicking on a sub-category or mistake specials/features as the products in the category.

Any help would be appreciated.

When you have sub-categories, soccer, tennis, football, etc -
Which one should open to show the products???
Some stores might have 500-1000 items per sub-cat and having them all open is not conducive to customer browsing...
I guess the basic question is if you want them all to open then why place them in sub-cats in the first place?

Am I missing something?

Like all things, it would be an option that can be turned on or off.

It would display every product in the top category index page underneath the thumbnails of the sub-categories.

Example:

• Sports

• Soccer / Tennis / Basketball / Football

• Product List

Clicking one of the sub-categories would open up the sub-menu index as usual.

Again - In what could be considered a relatively small shop that I viewed -

They have 23 top level cats - 94 sub-cats - and ??products

This just would not display on a single page that one would not have to scroll down and down forever

I'm sorry, you are still failing to see that not all shops are the same.

Furthermore, even if a shop had a lot of products within a category, Zen Cart doesn't display all the products on a single page. There are page numbers as well...

and below would see all sporting goods products.

I'm sorry, you are still failing to see that not all shops are the same.

You asked for "ALL" products not 10-12 per page

No, I do see this ...Do you see that this one script can not be everything for all these shops that are not the same??

What you want is not part of the default cart and I have attempted to indicate why this is not so. Look at the "Road Map" on this site for what changes are scheduled and/or post your want in the "Features Wanted" area

Ok, well the point of this thread was to find out if it could happen, and if not it should be implemented. It would be a simple configuration to overide NOT displaying category products when sub-categories are present.

<a href="http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?majorcatid=103&minorcatid=109">Click here for an example</a>

In this competitors website there are no subcategories present on the listing area of the page, although they are present. I would still want the sub-categories listed but by default it would display all the products in the top level category below the sub-categories menu. Are you still confused about what I am asking for?

Your competitors site looks to be a commercial cart with a configurator which another item/feature that is not present by default in Zen Cart....

What you want, because Zen Cart is OpenSource, can be custom coded either by you or you might post to the commercial help thread here on this site

Hi

I want to display more than one subcategory on the main page, how do I have to do?

suppose I have
I-cat1 :
II- sub cat 1 of cat 1
III- subcat 2 of cat 1

IV- cat 2
V- subcat1 of cat 2
VI- subcat 2 of cat 2
VII- subcat 3 of cat 2

now when I add this numbers in admin/layout setting/
Main Page - Opens with Category
i tried these possibilities to display nr. VII and III
2_3; 2_1
3_2; 1_2
2_3, 2_1
3_2, 1_2
all don't work and show only the first number.

any idea about the way of writing or the possibility of what I am going to get?

I did it following this instruction:
0= Top Level Categories
Or enter the Category ID#
Note: Sub Categories can also be used Example: 3_10
CATEGORIES_START_MAIN

note: every subcategory has again one sucat , so I don't want to show products of subcategories, but only the last subcategories in the mentioned sucategories above.

thanks

I have the same problem as reza. Did you ever solve it?