Display categories in Buy Stuff instead of long list of items?

[perplexed]

It wasnt an issue when I only had a few items but I seem to have lots now.

Is it possible to display expandable categories when you go to Buy Stuff instead of a potentially long list of separate items

eg  karma    - click on it to see all items in this category
       arcade    - click on it to see all items in this category
       random    - click on it to see all items in this category

If someone could explain how I might do this, that would be cool


thanks

[Daniel15]

What version of SMFShop are you using? SMFShop 3.0 has category support inbuilt, using a dropdown box at the top of the page. Take a look at the shop on this forum for instance (all the items in my shop are in "[Uncategorised]", as I've yet to make categories for them)

[perplexed]

I'm using version 3 and there is a category box at the top where you can select a category, but what I mean is more like, instead of displaying the item list under that - long list of items, it would display the categories which you could then click on to see the items in each

So your list in the buy stuff page would look like this:


Karma Items  < -   click here to see items
Arcade Items < click here to see items
Stealing
Gambling  etc

instead of

raise karma
decrease karma
arcade pass
arcade pass 2
rob the bank
pickpocket
scratchcard1
scratchcard2... and so on

[Lady Ambrosia]

In other words you want the category list to be in a table with all your category names listed on the Buy Stuff page, rather than have the drop down menu above all the items listed?

That actually would be a neat idea, but have it to where the admin can choose which method to use, but since Daniel is busy, it may take awhile; unless someone else could do it.

[perplexed]

yeah that's right.  I've noticed that people either dont scroll through the pages or they miss the category dropdown,.  I thought something more obvious might be good, and yeah, an admin option as to which display to use.

[perplexed]

While browsing the site this morning, I came across this old post from the shop idea thread, I think this is what I want to happen:

:-) hmmm, how to best explain this... ummm ok, There's only one SMFShop installation. For my RPG shop which is really just 'more' of SMFShop modded up to use items from a database table without the input_needed and extra stuff, I've added categories or departments or individual shops or whatever you'd like to call them actually. When a member goes to "Buy" something, instead of seeing a list of everything avaliable like SMFShop presently shows you... The members see a list of title bars, each one containing a department name i.e. Armor, Headgear, Hands, Arms, Feet, Weapons, Magic/Spells etc. When the user clicks on one of these, the page reloads and under the selected (department) titlebar is a list of items in that department, and the other titlebars display in their order as before... still waiting to be clicked on. Items per page works like SMFShop. All categories display on a page regardless of number of items per page. etc. I wasn't going to fiddle with adding it to SMFShop simply because I don't see a need for it in our installation (too few items) but I've seen several requests for it, including yourself now. We havea couple hundred items in the RPGShop. Even wth your request though, I'd feel much better letting Daniel deal with it since I really don't feel comfy letting out a full packaged, hacked version of SMFShop. If you're interested... and can manually install the code, I'd be willing to give that to you with instructions on how/where to insert it however.

[CRONUS]

Yep links in table would be better than dropdown list

[Craig!!]

Yeah.. this is a real neat idea..

[Than]

Agreed.