Zen Cart Product Types

A much requested feature in Store Manager for 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, compared to say a Garden Bench.

Each ZenCart Product Type collects certain kinds of information relevant to that product. Each product type has a different display of content in the store (ie: music shows a bit different than other products, and also allows the attaching of MP3 clips in the media manager, etc - all of which are displayed on the music product automagically, but not on a T-Shirt, 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 to 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 decided on. 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 best 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:

1. Click on Add Artist button  or Edit Artist button . You'll see the edit artist window.
   
   
    
2. Manage your product type layout.
    
3. Click Ok button to save this entry, or click on cancel button to discard this entry.

If you have any suggestions on ZenCart Product Types, you're welcome to contact our support team.