In Need of a custom categories menu

[Guest]

Hi all.

 

I have searched the contributions and cannot find anything that suits my needs, and have tried to write the required code myself to no avail (i just cant get my head around it).

 

Im not sure of protocol on these forums, but I am looking for help to write a contribution for me ( apologies if your not allowed to request this here, please let me know where I can if this isnt correct)

 

Ok, where do i start.

 

I have a computer shop site running at the moment and have around 400 categories. I would like to categorise the categories into logical groups like "Computers", "laptops", "peripherals", "printers" etc etc.

 

I have seen an similar example on http://www.computers4-u.co.uk/ which i really like the layout.

 

The next step is that I need to adjust the way the categories are displayed. Under say "laptops", I might already have 6 other categories which relate to these products. I would like all the products from those categories to display in "laptops" without the need to move the product from their current categories. The reason for this is that I pull a stock feed from a supplier, and the products are already assigned to categories which makes identifiying the products more logical.

 

as an example.

 

I need to be able to group categories together and the products within them are displayed in bulk..

 

Currently it would look like

 

"laptops" (top)

" Sony laptops" (2nd)

" Samsung Laptops" (2nd)

" Acer Laptops" (2nd)

" Apple Laptops" (2nd)

" Toshiba Laptops" (2nd)

" Toshiba Satellite" (3rd)

" Toshiba Tecra " (3rd)

" Toshiba Portege" (3rd)

 

 

As you can see this isnt very friendly to find stock, not to mention a nightmare to manage.

 

I ideally would like to have :

 

" Laptops" (top)

" All laptops in all the 2nd and 3rd and 4th levels deep contained in here "

 

I dont want the products to display in the category menu as I have over 100 laptops.

 

in the products listing then it would show all the laptops I have, from all the sub categories underneath laptops.

 

Its basically assigning multiple sub categories for the same product line under a top level category, and when selected they display all the sub categories.

 

I hope this makes sense.

 

Naturally i wouldn't expect this to be done for nothing, however if there is something out there already that fits the bill or I could adapt then I would be most grateful if you could point me in that direction.

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Regards

Craig

[♥mdtaylorlrim]

Sounds to me like you need to ignore the category as fed to you from the supplier and dump everything into one category. That's not going to be in the stock osC code, but in your feed code.

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I currently have 2200 different products, in almost 400 categories. The turnover of products is around 200 - 300 per week which would mean if i didnt automatically put them into the categories as they are fed to me, would be an administrative nightmare.

 

Regards

Craig

 

 

 

Sounds to me like you need to ignore the category as fed to you from the supplier and dump everything into one category. That's not going to be in the stock osC code, but in your feed code.

[♥mdtaylorlrim]

Hi,

 

I currently have 2200 different products, in almost 400 categories. The turnover of products is around 200 - 300 per week which would mean if i didnt automatically put them into the categories as they are fed to me, would be an administrative nightmare.

 

Regards

Craig

Then I don't understand your original question. You said:

 

I ideally would like to have :

 

" Laptops" (top)

" All laptops in all the 2nd and 3rd and 4th levels deep contained in here "

 

I read your post as your feed is sending you products in 400 different categories and you want only one. So, perhaps if you re-worded your question...

 

But my answer is still the same. Make the Feed Code put the products in your categories like you want. It is not in the stock osC code.

[burt]

Create your category structure as you want it.

 

Then you'd need to play with the SQL that;

 

1. creates the subcategories in the category infobox (perhaps you want to remove this entirely?)

2. creates the product listings in the index.php page to just show all product in all subcats of the top level category

 

Then you would need to play with the breadcrumb class to make sure that only top level category is added to it

 

Should not be too difficult?

[Guest]

Hi mark,

 

its very difficult to explain without litterally showing you the db and the code we are fed.

 

We are fed around 400 categories

 

we are then fed around 2200 different products.

 

the categories come with their own unique category code which we added a column in the categories table to contain.

 

the products also have a category code which was also added as a column to the products table.

 

at this point we populate the products_to_categories table by matching the category code on the product with the category code in the categories.

 

When you go into the admin we have a long list of 400 categories that all have products assigned to them.

I have over time created a category structure which was half decent, and as the products update (around 10 times a day), they automatically update into their current structure.

 

As i originally mentioned, my structure could end up about 4 or 5 levels deep for something quite simple like a laptop.

 

Rather than importing all the stock in bulk and having to manually assign its category, I wanted to just create a top level category, populate the structure of that in the admin with say all the different laptop categories i am fed. When you look at the categories list on the site, it will open laptops but explode and show the contents of all its sub categories below it.

This would mean I can keep the import routine the same, the stock fed falls into its fed category in the same way, but is purely displayed differently on the site in that instead of the menu drilling down as many levels as their is products, it just opens the top level and shows all the products from every sub category below it.

 

This is long winded I know, but hopefully this makes a little more sense.

 

Regards

Craig