Using the 'All Products..' display formatting for a sub-category (is it possible?!)..

Hey,

I've been fiddling about with Zen for a good few days now and must say I've been really impressed.. I've had no experience putting something together like this before, but with a little perseverance and quite a few Google searches which have lead me back here nine times out of ten (thank you!!), I've not done too badly in getting the store to start to look as I'd have hoped (I did have my doubts at the beginning though!) :cool:

I do have one question and I was hoping someone could help me out with if possible..

The main aspect of my site is the MP3 store, with merchandise (t-shirts, CDs, tickets etc.) playing a smaller, but still important part. For my purposes it's critical that the MP3 info is displayed as simply and neatly as possible, and I'm hoping that if it's possible to do what I hope, then I can still customise the layout for the more physical goods when the time comes if needed..

To display the MP3s, I've got one sub-category from the main category, and then the actual MP3s. So it's MP3 -> Label Name -> MP3s (-> individual MP3).

When you click on MP3 on the main page it expands all the labels and also displays them in the centre of the page with their relative logos (which is all good). If you then click on a label logo (either as part of the Categories section or the image) you're brought to the label display page, and can click on a track to bring up the individual track for download.. What I'd like it to do however, is to go straight from the label section, to a page that is displayed like the 'All Products..' section is..

I find the 'All Products...' format to be a lot neater for me than the one Zen uses at the moment (the text is smaller and neater (not big and bold), I like the spacing a divider lines better (rather than spaced really close together), and more info is displayed such as product code etc. (which you can only get to in the normal display by clicking on the MP3 to view it by itself)) . The only thing I would need to do is to create and icon like the 'buy now' one called 'listen to' so that customers can hear a clip of what they want to buy.

Its this possible to do via the admin panel, or will this involve some coding?

Many thanks for your time.

Ps. Oh and one more thing! As I've mentioned I want to give customers the ability to listen to clips, however I'd prefer it if it wasn't so easy to download the MP3s.. I've seen Wimpy player mentioned a few times now but their website isn't particularly informative.. Is this the program I want to be looking into?

You can do it, it will involve some coding. Are you familiar with PHP? I can give you some hint, but I can't give you the exact details how to do it though (no time).

A lot of the things you mention can be done with your stylesheet (font, divider, spacing), and the amount of information displayed and its order are controlled in admin > Configuration > Product Listing.

What you can't do without custom coding is get the exact arrangement of All Products, because the all/featured/new listings use a different template than the product listing.

gjh42:

A lot of the things you mention can be done with your stylesheet (font, divider, spacing), and the amount of information displayed and its order are controlled in admin > Configuration > Product Listing.

What you can't do without custom coding is get the exact arrangement of All Products, because the all/featured/new listings use a different template than the product listing.
You can manage to tweak that a bit, if you look at my best-seller mod you will notice that it does not have its own template, it uses category listing template file ^^.

Thank you both for your help, is really appreciated :smile:

I have a friend who's quite adept at coding so if he gets a spare moment I'll ask him to have a look as its a little beyond me. It's very helpful to know that its not something that's possible from the Admin alone however.

I've also been trying to change the format of the way the individual product is shown, but not had much luck so far... At the top of the section devoted to a single MP3 you have the text links, so - Home :: MP3 :: Record Label :: Track Name - and below this is the record label logo, followed by three buttons to see 'prev, listing and next', and then the title of the MP3 below. How I'd like it to display however would be to omit the label logo and three buttons allowing you to browse forwards or backwards.. This way it's removing info I don't need and keeping things simple, but still enabling the user to navigate using the 'Home :: MP3...' section. Again, can I remove the bits in-between using Admin, or is this another coding job?!

I need to start looking into the audio clips side of things seriously too.. I'm hoping my friend can code in a button that looks like the 'buy now' one, rather than the way Zen does it, which is to have a box with the link displayed in. I've figured out how to upload clips using Zen, but wasn't too keen on the MP3 location being given freely. If there's a better and more secure way of doing this, could someone please let me know?

Again.. Many thanks!!

Configuration > Product Info >
Previous Next - Button and Image Status
Previous Next - Navigation Includes Category Position
Previous Next - Navigation Includes Category Name and Image Status
Previous Next - Navigation Bar Position
Previous Next - Button and Image Settings

Sorry, I can't help you with the downloads.

Do experiment a bunch with admin settings and stylesheet coding before your friend starts trying to modify the code. No point in him reinventing the wheel to do something that can be done without modifying php files.

Thank you very much gjh42 - it's working a treat now. I'm getting a better appreciation for what sections in Admin correspond to what's displayed on the site now..

Hopefully the fine tuning I'm after with the formatting can be done in the style sheet and I'll investigate this now. The site should be live in under two weeks, so I'll post up the results when it's completed :smile:

If anyone can help with the audio clips then that'd be appreciated - but I'll keep looking into it and will let you know if its something I manage to sort!