Dropdown Sections Menu

[Owen Drumm]

I have a site where the shopping is done either by looking for the product under brand name or looking under product category. Every branded product has a duplicate under product category.

Is it possible to have a two seperate dropdown navigation menus, one for shopping by brand and one for shopping by category?

[gabrielcrowe]

Every branded product has a duplicate under product category

this foolish strategy causes page duplication on a site wide level. and i'd not recommend it, personally.

a clever way to do it, would be to use a custom var and apply the brand and the category to each product.

then use a custom seach to show the items you want.

then make links to the search script with your key word in it.

http://www.skateasylum.co.uk/cgi-bin...=-1&TB=A&SHOP=

in the url above, 'Birdhouse' is the keyword.

[Owen Drumm]

this foolish strategy causes page duplication on a site wide level. and i'd not recommend it, personally..

Rephrase please as it's too early in the day for me to get narked!

Anyway that's not what I am looking for. There is no sitewide page duplication as each product does not have a section of its own therefore brand pages and category pages are different.

[NormanRouxel]

Doesn't sound foolish to me. If you have one set of customers who are brand loyal and another set who shop by type of product then you're giving them both the option to drill down in the way they want.

If you have a Section structure like

By Brand
--Brand 1
----Product 1
----Product 2
----Product 3
----Product 4
--Brand 2
----Product 5
----Product 6
----Product 7
----Product 8
By Type
--Type 1
----Product 1
----Product 2
----Product 5
----Product 6
--Type 2
----Product 3
----Product 4
----Product 7
----Product 8

Then you don't have duplicated pages (some of the content is duplicated but not the entire page).

It should be possible to use the Section Structures to create 2 menus. Instead of using section_tree in your menu you could use section_tree[1].pChild and section_tree[2].pChild as the entry level for 2 menus.

[Goz]

Do you mean something like www.woodworkingcentreshop.co.uk ??

Haven't finished populating it yet (a long slog, this one).

The catalog structure was done pretty much as Norman has shown and then I used Norman's NorCascade.

I also think I remember leehack doing something similar on an early site of his - Birmingham Model Centre, I think it was? But that was probably a V7 site?

[Owen Drumm]

I am actually talking about a dropdown, not really like woodworkingcentreshop.co.uk

[NormanRouxel]

That's my NorCascade menu. It's been used on a site with a Section structure that starts with 2 top-level Sections - Product Ranges and Brands. Pretty much like my example in post #4 above.

Either of my NorCascade, NorList or Collapso menus will do this sort of thing. Details and demo links are on www.drillpine.biz/actinicstuff/

[Goz]

I wasn't suggesting that you should do it like woodworking centre - I was merely showing that yes - it's possible. I could have used Norcascade to produce drop down menus as you are after - and as per Norman's replies.

Also, as Gabriel was pointing out (and as I'm sure you're aware) the duplication of products and subsections is a b*ll aching task... I may well look at his suggestion sooner rather than later!