Display products on main page sorted by category

Hi.

Excuse me if this is a common question, I'm new to Zencart, and I have looked at the FAQs and searched the forums, but maybe I was using the wrong terms.

I'm working on a shop that I'd like to customize the appearance of. Currently, the front page displays a box with all the products from several categories, in random order.

I'd like to change that to display four (or some small number of) categories. (The most recent? The most popular?)
Furthermore, each category should display some number of products.

My main requirement is to have the products on the front page split up by category. What is the best way to do this?

My current store is http://tina-chaden-direct.com/store/

Thanks for all the help!

I have run into the same problem sort of. Getting around it by making a favorites category, and making sure that all the products have a unique sort order. IE Travel catagory has sort of 100 - 200 - 300, and then Nature is 400 - 500? Then ONLY the lowest sort order shows on the main page (from the favorites category) in the sort order defined. Don't know if it will work for you on not. But it sure stopped everything from being random, and moving around on my page!
Don't have any idea what it will do to a spider? Sorry.

Thanks for the tip, Minerva35. However, I'm not really worried about the random order - I just want the products, instead of being randomly jumbled into one box, be randomly (or not randomly) jumbled into several boxes, based on which category they are in.

Here is an example from the Zencart showcase which illustrates what I am trying to do:
http://www.directconsumersales.com.au/index.php?main_page=index

Their main page has per-category boxes on the front page, and each box displays some products from that category. How can I do this?

I, too, am looking for a similar type of function. Let us know if you find anything out.

I'm trying to do this too. Anyone have a solution? seems like it would be a build in function of zencart.

I'm trying to do the same thing. - It should be quite simple and straightforward.

As things are at the moment I have just installed the column_layout_grid_v_1_3_8 contribution and have made my categories appear on the main page Configuration -> Layout Settings -> Categories - Always Show On Main Page...

Next, in my case I need to replace the categories titles with images or images and rollover text (Javascript - CSS - not sure yet).

Categories Dressing mod would seem to be the contribution for making images appear on them main page in place of category titles.

So far, however, over 1 hour of configuration changes and it's not doing that for me.