... to get it on the top I run into a problem....

Are you attempting to move the category image from the bottom of the description so that it is displayed directly to the left of the description?

I would also like help with this. The image appears lost down there

Check it out, especially the heat map... Include one line of Javascript in your website for some really NEAT stats

Hi everyone,

I'm in the middle of an extremely large project with multiple addons being developed to extend the administration and customer sides of cs-cart.

Because staying withing budget is always a priority, I took it upon myself to learn how to create an addon that is accessible in the admin settings section and that is designed to extend existing cs-cart functionality, such as the user authentication system, the categories and product systems.

Some of my discoveries include...

* How the "had to look to find it" /admin.php?target=settings_dev file is used to add new addons and extend cs-cart with new and additional settings that are definable within the administration web interface.

* 75 existing cs-cart module areas that allow ANY addon to plug into it. This is how the Listmania addon shows up everywhere (Categories, Products, Pages, etc...)

* How an addon can register itself to be included in any of the 75 module addon areas mentioned above by creating only 1 php file.

* Core cs-cart functionality that handle data manipulation between the user interface, the template system, the shopping cart programing logic, the database and finally the user (admin, customer, mail and partner)

* 2 files that are automatically loaded with any active addon that allows you to first define the configuration data that your addon program needs to function properly and the necessary php functions that interact with the cs-cart system and your addon.

* The necessary folder structure that is needed for your addon code and skin/template files.

* And a few other intersting discoveries with the template system for addons as well.

I'm not sure how long this current cs-cart version will be in place, but I'll try post a follow up to this post shortly on the step-by-step process I'll be using to create addons for cs-cart 1.35sp3.

Let me know if you're interested in that.

The current functionality of the import functionality forces us to predefine an external csv file that has predefined fields, etc..

Using an affordable 3rd party script that I recently found (~ $90 USD) we'll be able import any datafeed from any source (url, server, filesystem) in php, it will iterate through a list of "record" objects, no matter what the source file is.

Each record has a key and a value (field/value)
You can also access specific information about a record by providing a key value.

This would allow the creation of datafeed import profiles that would contain information as to the file location, the mapping information between [database product, image and feature fields] and the datafeed fields.

If you'd be interested in developing this type of admin addon, please get in touch with for specific requirements.

Sorry about that guys

My site is still under development, but let's see if I can clarify it a little further.

The default behavior of any category's landing page is to show it's products below the full description.

Look at this website for example when you click on the diamonds category:
http://www.mondera.com/

Diamonds having loose diamonds as the primary category's product also has MANY subcategories (diamonds pendants, diamond earrings, engagement rings)

Because there's no point in showing a visitor all loose diamonds when more than likely they are interested in a very select group of them, turning off default product showing for this category is required.

The diamonds category is pretty much used as a place holder for within the category system. Displaying diamonds as products on this category's page would defeat the purpose of the website visitor's purchasing path that the company chooses (custom subcategory layout, predefined search results, etc...)

And setting up an option with Yes or No (default Yes) to show products maintains the original functionality of the CS-cart category system that will still be used by other categories not needing a custom layout.

Simple insert the custom landing page html in the Full Description and voila...

This option serves its purpose for now... However ideally what I'm going to code once our skin is done is a custom landing page admin addon for categories instead of using the built in behavior...

custom product details pages addon idea (I like brainstorming)
Each category can have it's own product details page that will be applied to all products in the category, otherwise use product, otherwise use default
Each product can have it's own product details page, otherwise use category, otherwise use default.

Total Steps: 4
Degree of Difficulty: easy to moderate
Files to be modified: 2

In order to use a "custom" landing page for categories, some of the default functionality would need to be disabled, such as the displaying of products.

Creating a custom landing page can be as easy as adding the appropriate html code to the Full Description of any category.

Here's the method I used to create "Show Products?" option for each category.
Note: this method can be used to apply other settings to categories.

Step 1. Create a language variable: show_products

---
Step 2. Create a new field in the cscart database table: cscart_categories with the following parameters

1. Field show_products
2. Type: CHAR
3. Default: Y

---
Step 3. File Modification: (1 of 2):
[skin]/admin/categories_pages/categories_update.tpl
(I'm using default blue for this example)

find this:

{if $settings.Addons.discussion == "Y"}
 {include file="addons/discussion/allow_discussion.tpl" object_id=$category_data.category_id object_type="C" title=$lang.discussion_title_category}
{/if}

add this after the above code:

<tr>
	<td class="field-name" nowrap>{$lang.show_products}:</td>
	<td> </td>
	<td>
		<select name="category_data[show_products]">
			<option value="Y" {if $category_data.show_products == 'Y'}selected="selected"{/if}>{$lang.yes}</option>
			<option value="N" {if $category_data.show_products == 'N'}selected="selected"{/if}>{$lang.no}</option>
		</select>
	</td>
</tr>

---
Step 4. File Modification: (2 of 2)
[skin]/customer/categories_pages/categories.tpl

find this:

{if $products}
{if $settings.Appearance.columns_in_products_list > 1}
	{include file="products_pages/products_multicolumns.tpl" columns=$settings.Appearance.columns_in_products_list}
{elseif $settings.Appearance.advanced_products_list == 'Y' && $client_env.is_javascript == 'Y'}
	{include file="products_pages/products_advanced.tpl" title=""}
{else}
	{include file="products_pages/products.tpl" title=""}
{/if}

{elseif !$subcategories}
<p align="center"><b>{$lang.text_no_products}</b></p>
{/if}

replace with this this:

{if $category_data.show_products == "Y"}
{if $products}
{if $settings.Appearance.columns_in_products_list > 1}
	{include file="products_pages/products_multicolumns.tpl" columns=$settings.Appearance.columns_in_products_list}
{elseif $settings.Appearance.advanced_products_list == 'Y' && $client_env.is_javascript == 'Y'}
	{include file="products_pages/products_advanced.tpl" title=""}
{else}
	{include file="products_pages/products.tpl" title=""}
{/if}

{elseif !$subcategories}
<p align="center"><b>{$lang.text_no_products}</b></p>
{/if}
{/if}

I'd like to know how to properly build an addon using the cs-cart/addons folder structure

What's required to make an addon "live" once the files are in place

It seems to be extremely difficult to find adequate information on how to extend Cs-Cart with custom addons.

I'm an able coder and would like to start writing some addons I've alerady thought about.

However, I'm unable to decipher the necessary steps to creating an addon that works within CS-cart.

If anyone knows anyting about creating addons, please reply to this thread.

Once I figure it out, i'll write a step-by-step guide for the version I'm working with at the time.

The first block of code was taken out of customer/top_menu.tpl and inserted into buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl with a few new $variables: $title, $target, $mode

Then adding a new tab to the top menu is as easy as adding this in top_menu.tpl
{include file="top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.variable target=value mode=value}

I come from an object oriented programing background, and it just seemed logical to take the tab button completely out of the tab strip and make it its own entity.

The only real requirement is the title value. If no target and mode are supplied, the home page is returned.

If someone could rewrite the code that appears in top_menu_tab.tpl to properly construct the link url to only append the target and/or mode parameters if they are included, currently if they are left out, the url will look like: index.php?target=&mode= which is kind of ugly.

Create the following file: /customer/buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl

<div class="top-menu{$but_active}-left-bg">
    <div class="top-menu{$but_active}-right-bg">
        <div class="top-menu{$but_active}-bg" onclick="fn_redirect('{$index_script}?{$target}={$target}&{$mode_name}={$mode')">
            <a href="{$index_script}?{$target_name}={$target}&{$mode_name}={$mode}" class="top-menu-title">{$title}</a>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

And here's how I use it within customer/top_menu.tpl

{* $Id: top_menu.tpl 3838 2007-09-05 07:49:51Z zeke $ *}

<div class="wrapper-top-menu-left">
<div class="wrapper-top-menu-right">
<div class="wrapper-top-menu">
	<div class="logo-image-wrapper">
		<a href="{$index_script}"><img src="{$images_dir}/{$manifest.Customer_logo.filename}" width="{$manifest.Customer_logo.width}" height="{$manifest.Customer_logo.height}" border="0" alt="{$settings.Company.company_name}" /></a>
	</div>
	<div class="top-menu-tabs-wrapper">
		<div class="float-right">
			{include file="top_quick_links.tpl"}
		</div>
		<div class="top-menu-tabs">
			{if $target == 'checkout' || $mode == 'cart'}
				{assign var='but_active' value='-active'}
			{else}
				{assign var='but_active' value=''}
			{/if}
			{include file="buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.view_cart target="checkout" mode="cart"} 

			{if $target == 'profiles' || $target == 'auth'}
				{assign var='but_active' value='-active'}
			{else}
				{assign var='but_active' value=''}
			{/if}

			{if $auth.user_id}
	            {include file="buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.my_account target="profiles" mode="update"} 
			{else}
	            {include file="buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.my_account target="auth" mode="login_form"}     
			{/if}

			{if $mode == 'catalog' || $target == 'products' || $target == 'categories' || $target == 'manufacturers'}
				{assign var='but_active' value='-active'}
			{else}
				{assign var='but_active' value=''}
			{/if}
            {include file="buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.catalog mode="catalog"} 

			{if $target == '' && $mode == ''}
				{assign var='but_active' value='-active'}
			{else}
				{assign var='but_active' value=''}
			{/if}
			{include file="buttons/top_menu_tab.tpl" title=$lang.home}            
		</div>
	</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

and here's the output from the smarty template debugger showing that there four tabs being included:

top.tpl (0.00662)
top_menu.tpl (0.00372)
top_quick_links.tpl (0.00195)
addons/promotions/top_quick_links.tpl (0.00036)
top_menu_tab.tpl (0.00023)
top_menu_tab.tpl (0.00021)
top_menu_tab.tpl (0.00021)
top_menu_tab.tpl (0.00021)

I vote for Layered Navigation, like Magento Commerce is doing (www.magentocommerce.com)

Feature Sets (aka in Magento: Attribute Sets) with scope option (apply set to product/category/global/etc)

This will make managing features and applying them to groups of products a breeze.