fmProductTypes, EditProductTypes, fmEditProductsLayout - Product Types Section
A much requested feature in Zen Cart
was the ability to have unique information layouts for different types
of products. For example, a Music Video needs to have different
information stored and displayed, in comparison with, lets say, a Garden Bench.
Each product type in Zen Cart collects certain kinds of information
relevant to that product. Each product type has a different display of
content in the store (i.e: music is displayed a bit differently than other
products as, for example, it allows the attaching of MP3 clips in the media
manager, etc - all of which are displayed at the page of the music product automatically, but it is not the same for the other products: when you sell T-Shirts, for example).
In the Catalog -> Product Types menu, there is a listing of
product types. In Zen Cart for each product type, you can select the
default settings for entry of new products of that type (such as default
tax class, so you don't have always select this when entering new
products of that type).
- Type ID is an auto_incrementing field and is used to cross reference the type with other Database Tables.
- Type Name is user defined, but you should try and stick
with the naming conventions that the core team have chosen. For
example, in Zen Cart 1.2 there are Products - General for the standard
product, and Product - Music for a product type designed for Music CD's.
Then we have Document - General for a basic layout for an information
only Document, and Document-Product for a Document that can be sold.
- Handler Page again is user defined and is used to build
the URL to the code that actually does the work for the product type -
to access the unique code for a given product type. It is preferable to define
this similarly to the Type Name. For example if the Type Name is
Product-Music, the Type Handler would be product_music.
- Master Type is used to link product types together.
This is mainly used if you want to build separate sideboxes to display a
category tree of just certain product types. For example the Document
types are linked so that we can provide a sidebox that can be used just
to navigate categories containing Document Types.
- Add to cart option enabled shows Product Types that are
for information purpose only, and because of that you do not want to
allow your customer to add them to the cart.
- Default Image is reserved for future usage.
- Date Added and Last Modified are for internal use only.
Product Type Info Page Layout section
It has always been possible in Zen Cart to decide which elements of a
product's information are displayed. As different product types will
have differing types of information, it is possible to use a separate
table for product types to manage Info Page Layout.
In order to edit a Zen Cart product type layout:
- Click on Add Artist button
 or Edit Artist button  . You'll see the edit artist window.
- Manage your product type layout.
- Click Ok button to save this entry, or click on cancel button to discard this entry.
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