I don't want a dynamic menu for the categories, help please?

[Aprilrobin]

If someone familiar could just point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

I would like to use images for my categories on the left hand side.

I know how to make and add the images and all - here's what I'm stuck.. what do I link them to?

 

Say I'm making a jewelry site and one of my categories is earrings. I have the graphic button for earrings but how to I get to just the earrings page of products?

 

I wish I could just leave this dynamic, unfortunately that is not an option.

 

I really appreciate any help at all and I hope I'm making sense!

 

thank you,

april

 

 

Agh! I'm using STS 4.5.. meant to put this in that forum!!!!

Edited April 6, 2007 by Aprilrobin

[bkellum]

If someone familiar could just point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

I would like to use images for my categories on the left hand side.

I know how to make and add the images and all - here's what I'm stuck.. what do I link them to?

 

Say I'm making a jewelry site and one of my categories is earrings. I have the graphic button for earrings but how to I get to just the earrings page of products?

 

I wish I could just leave this dynamic, unfortunately that is not an option.

 

I really appreciate any help at all and I hope I'm making sense!

 

thank you,

april

 

 

Agh! I'm using STS 4.5.. meant to put this in that forum!!!!

April, dynamic can still be your option...

Check out the following contribution:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2387

With the above contribution, you can still use your $categorybox STS tag in your template.

You may need to combine the above contribution with this one as well if you desire your category links to go directly to a product page instead of a category:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4474

 

Otherwise, what Michael suggested would work as well (although it would be a static menu).

 

Hope this helped,

Edited April 7, 2007 by bkellum

[Aprilrobin]

Just don't put $categorybox variable in your STS HTML template. Instead, manually code all the links to your pages. For example, for earrings, just grab the html link for your earring cat and put an <a href to that link.

 

This is exactly what my problem. Forgive me, it may be glaringly obvious to you guys but I'm just confusing myself! I understand I would need to manually link like a regular ole static menu, that's no prob as there are only a few main categories, my problem is I'm not sure where to link them to. Which file would contain just my earring products? This is what my peabrain can't seem to figure out.

[Aprilrobin]

April, dynamic can still be your option...

Check out the following contribution:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2387

With the above contribution, you can still use your $categorybox STS tag in your template.

You may need to combine the above contribution with this one as well if you desire your category links to go directly to a product page instead of a category:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4474

 

Otherwise, what Michael suggested would work as well (although it would be a static menu).

 

Hope this helped,

 

Yep I realize it'll be a plain ole static menu , but I'm trying to help someone her and that it what he wants! He likes oe there category image show up on the category page but doesn't like the changing size of the vertical dropdown menus. It seems like it should be easy but I just can't figure out exactly where I'm supposed to link these static images to. Like I can't find the page that contain just the product information for "earrings", just "rings" just "pendants", which are the sub categories I have under my main category "jewelry".

 

I do very much appreciate those links though, I have them bookmarked, good info to have if I want to try and attempt to customize again!

[Aprilrobin]

OK, well I'm glad to say I figured it out through a bit of trial and error. I added the $categorybox and viewed myu store, clicked on the subcategories and grabbed the urls, then applied them to my static links. If I start them at index.php?cPath= and cut them off at Path=randomgivennumber and use that as my link it seems to work great. Haha, I am singlehandedly dumbing down OSC.

 

thanks again for your help. maybe next time I'll be able to customize a store w/o driving myself and this form nuts!!

 

Have a good holiday!

 

--April

Edited April 7, 2007 by Aprilrobin

[bkellum]

OK, well I'm glad to say I figured it out through a bit of trial and error. I added the $categorybox and viewed myu store, clicked on the subcategories and grabbed the urls, then applied them to my static links. If I start them at index.php?cPath= and cut them off at Path=randomgivennumber and use that as my link it seems to work great. Haha, I am singlehandedly dumbing down OSC.

 

thanks again for your help. maybe next time I'll be able to customize a store w/o driving myself and this form nuts!!

 

Have a good holiday!

 

--April

April, when making your links, you have to make them in a way as to not drop the session ID. Otherwise, the links will drop everything that the customer has placed in his/her shopping cart.

Check out the Knowledge Base article on creating links & keeping the session ID. You need to use the tep_href_link function to create your links to ensure the SID's are not lost.

<?php echo '<a href="' . tep_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT) . '">' . 'CHECKOUT' . '</a>'; ?>

 

or you could also use:

<a href="<?php echo tep_href_link(FILENAME_CHECKOUT, '', 'SSL'); ?>" class="[b]links[/b]"><?php echo HEADER_TITLE_CHECKOUT; ?></a>

Both of these examples do the same thing. Of course, if you use Force Cookies in your shops configuration, then you do not need to worry about the tep_href_link function.

Edited April 7, 2007 by bkellum