Duplicating products - can I avoid this?

[Paddington Bear]

Hi there,

Sorry if this has already been asked.

Most sites have a list of products with short descriptions, and you can click on each one to get the big description. Also, you can 'add to cart' directly from the short description or from the big one.

Unfortunately, the way I've built my site, the two different description pages will lead to different orders of the same product, so the various counters (best seller, stock quantities) etc become invalid. This is even worse with digital downloads, where I have to upload my MP3s twice, once for each order.

To illustrate what I mean: If you click on the 'add to cart' button on one of my products, it will appear in the cart with a quantity of '1'.
If you go back and click on it again, it will now say '2' in the cart.
However, if you go to the detail page and add to cart from there, it will add a new item to the cart. The total is 3, but it's 2 + 1.

Did I do something wrong? How do I make both clicks apply to the same item?

If my question is not clear, then please let me know what you need to know and I'll edit it.
An example area is our list of CDs, here: http://www.ursulajames.com/acatalog/cds.html

Thanks,
PB

[Paddington Bear]

Asked and answered

Ha ha!

It's Sunday night, I'm all alone and I've cracked it.

I must have missed the relevant page from the basic 'How To' manual.

I've been creating separate 'Product' pages, rather than using 'Paste as duplicate' which carries all the details with it.

Now I have a lot of work to do... but it should result in a smaller and leaner website.

PB