Can CS allow me to list products in their general category and also allow me to have the items listed on special pages. For example:
Categories will be:[list]
[]Cat 1
[]Cat 2
[]Cat 3
[/list]
Special pages will be:[list]
[]Items under $50
[*]Mother's Day Gifts
[/list]
Any particular product could be listed in any or all of the above five sections.
How would this be accomplished? Does CS have a “special page” function to which I can select products, or would these special pages really be additional categories?
Yes, CS-Cart does have these 'special pages' - it's called Product Features, each feature can have its own page, with its own unique content, while simultaneously displaying products from one or more categories.
Thanks. Is there a tutorial on this? The functionality is not exactly intuitive.
Yes, see here for the tutorial: Product Features.
I agree the documentation isn't great, but Product Features and Product Filters can both work together to do exactly what you're looking for, I am working on a new site just now with the same functionality ideas you have above.
You can also just create them as categories and then manually fill them with (for example) products with a price of < $50.