How to Create Product with 100 Categories for a Blog Awards Entry Submission

I am using eCart 4.5.2 and I have PayPal Payments Pro, which requires I use PayPal Express Checkout and PayPal Payments Pro interfaces in my cart checkout page.

With that being said, how do I create and eCart product that will have around 100 categories. Buyers will be able to select up to 3 categories out of the 100 if they pay the basic price. If they pay an additional amount they get to select up to 6 categories.

The product is a Blog Awards Entry modeled after the Webby Awards. The buyer would essentially select categories for their Blog to enter the Awards and pay for their entry from my website, etc.

I am not sure how to achieve this but I am wondering two things:

1. Do I need to create a Entry Form with all the categories and functionality I need described in paragraph 2 FIRST and have this data somehow (I have no clue) passed on to the eCart checkout form? And then the buyer can continue to make their purchase using PayPal Pro / Express Checkout with their entries categories already embedded in the checkout form? If so, is there any example on how to do this anywhere?

or

2. Do I need to create an eCart Product with all 100 categories and options the way I need them as described in paragraph 2? If that is the case is there a sample of this or information / tutorials available that can demonstrate this?

Please advise at your earliest convenience.

I did do a search on "categories" and read several pages of material but none seemed to apply exactly to what I needed for my Blog Awards Entry deal.

Thanks very much for reading and reviewing my question.

Dante

So you will have 2 different products:
Simple Registration - 3 Categories.
Advanced registration - 6 Categories.


These should be set up on 2 separate product details pages. each page will have a unique add to cart button.

to set up the 100 categories, you will probably want to use a categories table:
categoryID - Primary Key
categoryName

create a record for each category.


To set up the cart, you will need to add 6 new columns to the eCart object, cat1, cat2, cat3 etc.

on the basic product page, add the add to cart button, set the first three category columns to be updatable from a select list. On the advanced product page, set all 6 category columns to be updatable from a select list,


You will need to create a record set to return all of the categories, for each select list the add to cart button creates, set them to be dynamic and use the category record set to populate the label and value with the category name.

Hi Jason,

I have not tried what you recommended yet but I just want to thank you for the very speedy reply! Excellent Customer Service.

More than likely I will need further assistance.

Dante