Index page and controlling product order

[judeabb]

I am new to OSCommerce as the basic nature of these questions will testify. I am designing a site for someone using GoLive and am only using OSCommerce for the selling of products bit. So it's not for the whole site. I'm in somewhat of a tangle with various things, mostly to do with the index page and the categories and the product display order. Anyway, any help with any of the questions below will be much appreciated. I have really tried to find answers to stuff via the forums a s I know you must get sick of answering the same questions over and over.

Thanks in anticipation!

 

You can find the site (it's not live yet) at: http://www.nomasters.co.uk/shopping/

 

? the contents of the box I?ve called No Masters cds on the index page are (I think) part of ?new products?. I have no control over them. If they?re in any of my categories then they appear on the index page. The order they appear in seems to be related to when I last edited or added them.

? in the bit of the site that isn?t OSCommerce, I have a catalogue page where I list all the products (in whatever order I choose) and have a link to the products info page for that particular product (of which more later).

so, one of these two pages is pointless really, as they cover the same ground.

? can I bypass the index.php page?

 

I?ve got two categories of product ? cd?s and downloads. If you go to a particular product?s info page then its category appears in the header bar. If you click on it you get all the products listed in that category. So far so good. I have been trying to order the products by product model and have found lots of advice in the forums which I?ve followed, I?ve even poked around in the database (very scary!) and still it orders them according to (I suspect) the order they were last edited or looked at. So that?s doing my head in.

I?d also like the categories to be listed in that bar all the time, not just when you click on a product and go to its info page.

? product id?s also seem to be assigned in a quite random fashion.

 

So it boils down to bypassing the index page and controlling product order I think.

[♥kymation]

The index.php page performs three functions:

-- The default front page of the site.

-- A list of the products in a given category.

-- A list of subcategories in a given category.

If you don't need any of these functions, you can remove all references to the file (search for FILENAME_DEFAULT in all files.) If you need one or more parts of this file, you'll need to edit the code. Both will take some work.

 

To control the order of your products, look in the Contributions section for the Sort Order contrib. This is a fairly easy fix that will give you complete control.

 

Regards

Jim

[judeabb]

The index.php page performs three functions:

-- The default front page of the site.

-- A list of the products in a given category.

-- A list of subcategories in a given category.

If you don't need any of these functions, you can remove all references to the file (search for FILENAME_DEFAULT in all files.) If you need one or more parts of this file, you'll need to edit the code. Both will take some work.

 

To control the order of your products, look in the Contributions section for the Sort Order contrib. This is a fairly easy fix that will give you complete control.

 

Regards

Jim

 

Sir, you are a genius! I read your reply and then installed your include_html contribution (took a bit of doing but I'm not great at this!) and have got rid of that new products box which was both bugging me, and surplus to requirements, and am now editing that page via html which is something I can grasp. It doesn't look great yet, because I've just got it working, but I feel like I've got some control over it now. So, once again, a HUGE thank you.

I'll let you know when I go live.