Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

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Mon, 08/03/2009 - 17:21

Yomofu

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I've been wrestling with this problem for many hours now, and my indignant cerebellum left the building in a huff hours ago.

I'm trying to create a suckerfish menu of a product catalog. I might use Nice Menus or something else. But how thats done isn't the problem.
First I need to have a menu. Thats key.
Ubercart's Catalog doesn't implement a menu, as far as I can tell.
Some of the postings I've read suggest using taxonomy menu, utilizing the Catalog vocabulary. Ok. I've tried that.
I've built the vocabulary, with categories and subcategories of products, and used pathauto to make some nice automatic aliases.
The problem is that the
links from this menu then go to a basic taxonomy term view, of the taxonomy/term/% variety (drupal paths, not path aliases).

Which isn't nearly as useful as utilizing the Ubercart's built in catalog, which can list and link to subcategories.

Drupal's basic taxonomy only list's nodes that are tagged with the current term, and omitts a lot of the useful information provided by the Catalog, such as subcategories, counts of number of products in a category, etc.

I've thought about overriding the theme function that handles displaying taxonomy listings. I was thinking to iterate through a term's child terms and list/link-to those, in addition to listing any products. Probably displaying multiple instances of a dynamic view, with args for terms. But this will involve some heavy lifting, and an required and cherished part of my brain is still at large.

Has anyone managed to use taxonomy menu and have it link to to the appropriate place in the Ubercart catalog?
If so, please, I beg of you, tell me how. I'll give you have of my cerebellum, if it returns. I've tried using Taxonomy Redirect, but I couldn't seem to get it working.

Alternatively, has anyone managed to make the catalog implement a menu in the menu system (that could then use something like nice menus)?

Cheers,

Madness takes it's toll ...

... please have exact change.

Mon, 08/10/2009 - 11:20

#1 View page

qrios

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Re: Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

As a long term Ubercart user/developer I can say that this is one of the last major "issues" with Ubercart. I implemented "taxonomy menu" once, but did use the custom themed default taxonomy pages instead of the catalog pages.

On top of this UC product's active menu parent detection/selection seem to be broken, leaving you with no other option then to use the default "catalog menu" block.

I'm interested too in a solution that generates real menu items using real Drupal API's instead of mimicking that.

----------
Dekbed overtrek webwinkel

Tue, 08/25/2009 - 18:44

#2 View page

Axel_Pressbutton

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Ah....

Is this why every time I try to set the Menu Settings option for a product created via a Product Class it just keeps resetting itself back to Primary Links when saved ?

I'm thinking of restructuring my nav entirely and doing away with a top level 'Shop' as such and just have Primary Links generated by Views Pages for each of my Product Classes - will this help in any way towards having my top level nav option highlighted when I'm viewing a t-shirt product via my views generated t-shirts page for example?

Many thanks for any help, it's always greatly appreciated

Thu, 08/27/2009 - 06:13

#3 View page

DeVoreUK

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Catalog in navigation menu

I'm having a very similar problem. I just want to put a link to catalog as a secondary link in the navigation menu. However when viewed the catalog does not recognise that it is an active menu link and so the navigation menu disappears. Is there a workaround for this?

Thu, 08/27/2009 - 10:20

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giorgio79@drupal.org

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Re: Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

For similar reasons I don't use catalog anymore. It seems like a rehash of the taxonomy module, and just go with a plain product taxonomy vocab.

Review Critical
ClipGlobe - World Travel

Thu, 08/27/2009 - 13:08

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adamo

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Re: Re: Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

Newer versions of Taxonomy Menu allow you to change the paths that the taxonomy menu items link to. So you could use that with UC Catalog.

Fri, 08/28/2009 - 10:40

#6 View page

Axel_Pressbutton

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Still a bit confused

Sorry to be dim/confused...but I'm not sure how menu active states work in relation to products. I 'think' what qrios wrote, see below, could be my problem...or maybe I'm doing something wrong or even that I may have to go down the route of a completely different solution such as Taxonomy Menu..

qrios wrote:

On top of this UC product's active menu parent detection/selection seem to be broken, leaving you with no other option then to use the default "catalog menu" block.

In my case I'm not using the catalog but have opted to use Product Classes, each with it's own Taxonomy and Terms instead. Each of the product classes is shown as a list on the site using a Page View, each having it's menu option under the page settings set to 'Normal menu entry'. The settings for this are academic apart from the fact that the selected MENU is 'Primary links'. Bear with me, getting closer to the point...right, now I'm trying to get each product within each class to inherit the top level menu option and show it as active when on the product page itself. I've tried to set the 'Menu settings' for the products so that they have the correct parent item but still I have no joy - Does this indicate, as qrios mentions, that UC product's active menu parent detection/selection is in fact broken?

My next question is simply...how on earth do I go about highlighting the menu parent when it's only one level away Is the answer to do this with Taxonomy Menu or is there another module that can help in these situations...or even a simple workaround that I've stupidly missed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated - Thanks very much

Mon, 08/31/2009 - 00:13

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adamo

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Re: Still a bit confused

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's the Drupal menu system that sets the link to active... I'm pretty sure it just compares the menu link paths with the current path being accessed and makes the menu link active if they match. The menu system has no way of knowing that a particular node is considered a child of a particular menu item. Maybe this will help: http://drupal.org/node/186819

Tue, 09/29/2009 - 15:55

#8 View page

qrios

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No, you're not wrong. The

No, you're not wrong.
The point is that the default "catalog" block contains no Drupal menu, but a HTML mimic of a menu, not handled by the menu API's of drupal.

-----------------
Handdoeken en theedoeken webshop

Wed, 09/30/2009 - 01:37

#9 View page

adamo

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Re: No, you're not wrong. The

Taxonomy Menu + Menu Trails

Thu, 10/15/2009 - 22:16

#10 View page

Axel_Pressbutton

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Hi adamo...

are you saying that I'd need to use Taxonomy Menu AND Menu Trails...or is it a case of you can use EITHER to achieve the same result?

Many thanks

Fri, 10/16/2009 - 09:43

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adamo

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Re: _

Taxonomy Menu to create the menu from the catalog taxonomy vocab, similar to what UC Catalog does, only it's a real Drupal "menu". Then use Menu Trails to get the XYZ category in the menu to be Active (highlighted) when a product within the XYZ category is being viewed.

Thu, 10/22/2009 - 11:33

#12 View page

Axel_Pressbutton

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Many thanks

Hi adamo,

Thanks for clearing that up. It turns out that as I was using Product Classes I could get away with using just Menu trails (or at least that's how it worked for me in the end).

The thing is, it took me quite a while to figure out that the theme I was using on my live site where, this was going to be implemented, was actually screwing things up!!! I followed your advice on a nice clean local install (XAMPP) using D6.14, UC2-rc7 and the Acquia theme - WOW, I thought it's worked! Moved the module up to live and tested it...DIDN'T work

The theme i based the live site on was 'Basic' and for some reason this decides to drop the class="active" from the a href, whereas it's fine in the Acquia theme. Basic still moves the li class="active-trail" to the correct spot so at least once I'd found the problem it was easily addressed with a minor mod to the CSS.

So, thanks again for your help

Tue, 11/10/2009 - 11:15

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MrMatthieu

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Hi guys, Massive noob here

Hi guys,

Massive noob here and trying to make sense of your wisdom. I'm trying to spread my product categories across various tabs in the primary links menu. That is, I'd like my primary navigation to include product category parent tabs and include their children... something like this in structure:

Shoes
-Men
--Casual
--Formal
-Women
--Casual
--Formal

From what I've read there are issues with threading product categories with taxonomy terms, as this will produce results that are listed in taxonomy format, as opposed to something similar to product catalog in structure.

I've downloaded menu trails and taxonomy menus, but am so still having no luck.

Would deeply, deeply appreciate any tips, tricks (and possibly even some step by step instructions, if you're feeling generous)...

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Thu, 10/14/2010 - 10:42

#14 View page

shv_rk

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Hi there, I have the same

Hi there,

I have the same prolem. basically I need to make the taxonomy menu items remail active when the user is inside the node/ product detail page.
currently I am using taxonomy menu to generate catalog menu based on taxonomy.
I already tried to used menutrail and taxonomy trail menu modules however, unfortunately I coudln't get it working, they are a bit confusing and there is no configuration instruction or so.
may I ask you to explain how do you set it up?

Thanks,

Thu, 10/01/2009 - 10:14

#15 View page

SchwebDesign

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Joined: 09/30/2009

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Same here

I'm still having this exact same problem posted by Yomofu above. Any updates?

What about adamo's comment: "Newer versions of Taxonomy Menu allow you to change the paths that the taxonomy menu items link to. So you could use that with UC Catalog."

I've been trying to get this work but no luck yet... any suggestions?

-Cameron N. Hess
Web Designer and Developer
Schweb Design, LLC
www.schwebdesign.com

Tue, 12/14/2010 - 03:19

#16 View page

lellobot

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Re: Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

So, I know this is an old thread and what-not, but I just spent forever on this issue as well and found a solution for me.

Posted by volocuga on September 23, 2010 at 10:34am
Status:	active	» closed (fixed)

The solution was pretty simple

I used both Taxonomy menu and Taxonomy Menu Custom Path (which is a submodule of Taxonomy Menu) modules

On vocabulary settings page:
1) Menu path type -> custom path
2) Base path for custom path -> catalog

That's all. Now I have 'normal' Drupal menu. Cool!

I found this solution at http://drupal.org/node/919944 and i works for me.

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 09:23

#17 View page

Roger

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Re: Re: Catalog, Menu, Taxonomy, Confusion.

In addition to the post above. The new version of Taxonomy Menu has a feature to have 'Custom Menu per vocabulary'. So you only need to install one module to make the solution above work.

Also, to fix the active-trail problem, you can use 'Taxonomy Menu Trails' (http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu_trails).

There's still just one problem. Since I use a Drupal (taxonomy) menu to display the UC categories, it won't show the active-trail properly when browsing trough the catalog. Only when I'm on a product-node the active-trail is visible.

Working on a solution. When I find one I will update the post!

Sat, 12/25/2010 - 13:01

#18 View page

mwbyrd

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Importing

Roger,

How are you importing products and taxonomy at the same time? Do you have a good solution for this?

I've been able to use Node_import to get data in my website and get it to appear correctly. I'm trying to decide if using Views or Ubercart would be the best solution. (I'm trying to create an online store with affiliate products and want to leverage either Ubercart or Taxomony Menu to make the website easy to navigate).

Thanks,

Mike

http://www.finditandbuyit.com

Mon, 12/27/2010 - 08:39

#19 View page

Roger

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Re: Importing

I'm not sure I understand your question correctly. In my case the products are added manualy to the shop.

I'm using Ubercart for the shopsystem, 'taxonomy_menu' to have a Drupal menu (like primary and secondary) for my shop-categories (so i can use 'nice_menus' module).

You can now choose to use the Ubercart default catalog-system (like in the post Ive been replying to).

You can use the taxonomy term pages to view the products in each category. You can override the taxonomy term page with the 'views' module.

The problem with the last solution is that it won't show categories. For that you might use 'taxonomy_node' (every term will get it's own node), but that diden't work out for me.

With 'node_import' you should indeed be able to import node basic info, cck and taxonomy data. I don't know how it will respond to the fields Ubercart adds.

Thu, 01/13/2011 - 08:51

#20 View page

davidpauljunior

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Taxonomy Active Trail

I've just read through this thread in search of a solution to the problem I was having, but having come to the end of it, there appears to be no solution as of yet as you have the same problem.

I also use a Drupal taxonomy menu to display my ubercart categories, and thus, the active trail fails.

It's really really really bugging me!

Thu, 03/10/2011 - 13:26

#21 View page

davidpauljunior

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Resolution for Primary Link trails on Taxonomy Term Pages

The problem I had was:

I had a Primary Link item called 'Collection', with two child elements 'Full Collection' and 'Special Collection'. I had a separate Taxonomy Menu (using the taxonomy menu module) which display my taxonomy terms (in 'catalog' vocab).
Using the menu trails module my primary navigation had the correct active status for individual nodes, but it didn't work with taxonomy term pages. As soon as I went to say 'dresses' my 'collection primary link tab collapsed.

To resolve this, I went to my Primary Links menu (under site building > menus), then manually added an item for each of my taxonomy terms, as a child of the 'full collection'. I then disabled these items. So, they exist as children of the full collection, but they are not enabled.
Save that, and that's it.
This fixed the problem. I clicked on terms in my taxonomy menu, and the menu remained open with the active trail working.

Hope that helps some other people.

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