Manufacturer Info Plus

This is the support thread for the Manufacturer Info Plus sidebox. It tidies up the existing Manufacturer Info sidebox code (mainly by removing the inline CSS and removing a superfluous div tag). But it's main objective is to make the manufacturers info side box available on the manufacturers product listing or index listings that have been filtered by manufacturer.

It consists of a module file, a template file and installation instructions. Please read them before posting questions below.

Advance warning. Due to an ambiguity in how a particular data field is used in Zen Cart, it's possible to construct theoretical scenarios in which the manufacturers info box would be displayed on index pages where no manufacturer filter had been chosen. However, I haven't been able to create a scenario where it actually happens in my test environment.

Should this actually happen on a viewable site, I'd be interested to see it. However, it would do no harm and would simply be like having a random manufacturers icon and URL appear.

Kuroi, this sounds intriguing. Do you have it showing on a site currently?

kuroi:

This is the support thread for the Manufacturer Info Plus sidebox. It tidies up the existing Manufacturer Info sidebox code (mainly by removing the inline CSS and removing a superfluous div tag). But it's main objective is to make the manufacturers info side box available on the manufacturers product listing or index listings that have been filtered by manufacturer.

It consists of a module file, a template file and installation instructions. Please read them before posting questions below.

solarflare:

Kuroi, this sounds intriguing. Do you have it showing on a site currently?Afraid not. But there's not much to see really. It looks much the same on the manufacturers products listing as it does on product info pages. The only difference is that the other products link is removed. Most of its appearance will be determined by how you choose to style your sideboxes generally on your specific site.

so does this allow the user just to just click the brand logo, and it will show all the products of that brand, I believe this to be so?

R-Lo:

so does this allow the user just to just click the brand logo, and it will show all the products of that brand, I believe this to be so?

i installed your other contrib, worked that way, thx for your great work!

This mod just changes where the box is displayed, not normally how it works. Clicking on the manufacturer's icon will take you to the manufacturer's URL - whatever your have set it to.

Normally that's set to a URL on the manufacturer's site, or a page on yours about that manufacturer. You could create a link that calls the manufacturer's product listing, but since this mod is designed to be called on that page, this would not add a great deal in that circumstance.

But when your on a page other than the manufacturer's listing there is a link to "other products" that will take visitors to the manufacturer's product listing.

kuroi:

You could create a link that calls the manufacturer's product listing.

How do you create a link to the listing? Or, a page about the manufacturer?

So the manufacturers image actually shows on their product listing? Is there the ability to make it a different size than the other small images?

Hi Kuroi,

I am evaluating ZC & your module to use to filter a product selection for year/make/model. this is the closest I can find. Will your module filter? A customer comes to the website. They put in their year/make/model and then are only shown products for their vehicle.

Thanks,
Michelle

This mod's objective is simply to make the sidebox available in new locations. It has no involvement in filtering.

Hi,
I have a english-spanish site.

This sidebox generates a URL that opens the website as defined in the language settings in the Manufacturers definition (or so I thought..)

I would like to display both the english and spanish site addresses in the list.

After playing around with the code in
\includes\modules\sideboxes\TEMPLATE\manufacturer_info_plus.php
I find that removing the (int)$_SESSION['languages_id'] and substituting a fixed id (1 or 2) in both queries has no effect on the URL or the destination page: the URL still goes to the language-specified site as before.

I see the generated url is always
http://...../index.php?main_page=redirect&action=manufacturer&manufacturers_id=8

at which point I don't know how things work to get what I want.

Maybe I should be using a different format of url rather than using this inbuilt method?

Any general advice would be appreciated

Hey kuroi, is there any way to make the manufacturer's image linked to "Other XXXXXXX products" ?

pricediscrimination:

Hey kuroi, is there any way to make the manufacturer's image linked to "Other XXXXXXX products" ?I don't understand the question.