It took me a while but I figured out zen cart’s way of dealing with product images. It’s all about how you name the first product image you upload.
Add your product and make all the necessary adjustments to the product features.Then when it comes to uploading the initial image name it like this:
product.jpg. Then with filezilla or whatever ftp you use load up your additional images:
product1.jpg
product2.jpg
product3.jpg
Simple,right?
Except when I went to the help pages on the zen cart website no one explained it like that!
I was adding images by ftp not knowing why they wouldn’t show up on the product page and then trying out all different combos of names or directories. Nothing helped. Until I loaded a new product and accidentally did it right. Because if you upload product1.jpg as your first product image- loading product2.jpg, product.jpg and product3.jpg will result in no extra images showing up.
Some of the zen cart help articles tell you that zen cart will display on the product page any image that has a similar name as the first image you uploaded in the actual description of the product. I didn’t find this to be true. I also didn’t find the use of the extension_LRG or _MD to do anything either. It also didn’t seem to matter to what directory I uploaded the product images. If the product images weren’t uploaded in the right sequence with the right name-the extra images wouldn’t be displayed.
Hope this helps someone else.
Glad I know where to o for zen cart help!
Like you couldn’t write your own ecommerce solution in your sleep!
At last someoone has told me what I have been doing wrong for the last 3 weeks!
The product images make sense now that I have dispensed with logic.
In all fairness the Zen Cart prog is fantastic, but it’s these small niggles that really cause the problem.
Thanks, this has really helped.
DML: I’m glad I was able to help.Thanks for letting me know I helped.
As I’m trying to get ZC working to replace my old website, I’ve found a lot of the instruction in the forums and tutorials are not clearly written, leave steps out, or give the wrong words. This may be because of the different versions, but an example would be when an instruction says to hit “Add”, and there is no Add button. But, there is an “Insert” button. While the meanings are similar, one suggests you’re putting something at one end of a pile, and the other suggests it’s in the middle somewhere. As I get into this more, these things bother me less. But for a beginner it can really throw you off and you wonder if you’re even on the right page.
Anyway, to install additional images, I often just do it in Admin, in the product description. “Browse” the item on my computer, Preview, and Update. Then repeat for each image. If the images are item.jpg, item_1.jpg and item_2.jpg, and you upload item.jpg last, you’re all set. If item.jpg is already installed you can still add the other 2. Just be sure to go to the box for “select an existing image file from server” and type in item.jpg when you’re done. If I only have a couple items to add, I don’t bother with filezilla because this only takes a couple minutes.
Some photo editing tools save as .jpg and others as .JPG. Zen Cart does care and is case sensitive.
Oops, I forgot something. I got the additional images working OK, but now I want to find a way to display them near, or at the top of, the page, not the bottom. I’m sure the info is out there somewhere and shouldn’t take more than a few years to find 🙂
Gary, you are right.Zen Cart is nothing if not confusing and all the tutorials I’ve ever read about using it were also very confusing.You can literally spend years figuring it out because it is such a monster.
My post could be included in the mix of carelessly worded or confusing tutorials about Zen Cart and I see that when I re read it.I’m thinking of writing a part 2 that is much more clearly written.
If you want to move the additional products div which I think is wrapped in a td(ick!) you will have to modify the actual file responsible for showing the products pages and change the order of the output and not get scared of php code.
Brave of you and I wish you luck– if you do make the changes be sure to make it a part of your own custom theme so that when you upgrade your changes won’t be wiped out.I’d hate for you to lose years of hard work!
Of course if you succeed you must write a tutorial of your own on how you did it!
Um.. I tried to do it your way but that didnt work, so I searched the FAQ in zen-cart.com and it took me 30 seconds to figure it out.
Lets say the first picture is called product.gif, then you just call the others product_1.gif, product_2.gif and so on…
I suck at javascript, html, css and php – anyway, and I had _never_ cared or tried any things like that before, but it took me like 30 days of work, now I can do anything with zen-cart. Its extremly easy stuff, even for a complete noob like me.
Gary DeRoy, I can help you out with that one…
Go to: /includes/templates/template_default/template/tpl_product_info_display.php
Open the tpl_product_info_display.php and find this code:
get_template_dir(‘/tpl_modules_additional_images.php’,DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,’templates’). ‘/tpl_modules_additional_images.php’); ?>
So far so good? Ok, now cut or copy that code, and paste it where you want it on your page, for example if you want it at the very top – paste it right over this code wich is almost at the top:
Ok? Now you get the idea… if thats not where you want it to be, just try paste it some other place.
Jonas
I have no idea why, but a lot of my post was cutted out here so but you can read it here: http://pastebin.com/f4d294843
Jonas, I don’t know what you mean by “Um..I tried to do it your way but that didn’t work” because what you said did work for you is exactly what I said to do.
Make changes like you suggested to answer Gary’s image placement question to your own custom themes so that when Zen Cart upgrades your changes won’t be overwritten.
No, sorry. You said “name the images like this: product.jpg, product1.jpg, product2.jpg” and so on…
You need a underline(_) between “product” and “1”.
This is correct:
product_1.jpg
This is not correct:
product1.jpg
Yes, I found out a bit to late – that I had to customize my own template so the upgrades not would affect my site :S But anyway, I dont think I want to upgrade it in the future.
So I have been spreading misinformation because I was just mad that I could only have one image per product so I tried to ruin it for everyone else?
All joking aside, I upload 6 new products a week with 3 extra images per product–so I think I would know if it worked or not.
In fact your way and my way are one in the same because we are both not putting numbers in the initial product name. It doesn’t matter if you use an underscore or not.That is why I said we are doing the exact same thing.
Also, if you name one product “Sam’s Burger”-and you name another product “Sam’s Burger and Fries” the images for “Sam’s Burger” may also show up in the product page for “Sam’s Burger and Fries”.I wrote that this wasn’t true but it turns out that it does actually sometimes happen.It’s the sometimes that makes me laugh.
I find it hard to believe that you went to the Zen Cart forums and managed to ignore the massive amount of documentation on why you need to make your own custom themes–because that’s pretty much the first thing you’re told to read before getting in there to do custom coding.
But hey what do I know I’ve only been running a successful Zen Cart store for almost 2 years.