newbie question re: recordset and ecart buttons

Hi,

Newbie here... I have successfully set up a recordset, cart, confirm page, etc.

I'm ready to set-up another bunch of merchandise for sale. All of this 2nd batch (gifts) of merchandise will be stored in the same table as 1st batch (t-shirts). I intend to call up the 2nd batch by pulling it up based upon category type (this I know how to do).

My question is whether I can use the same cart that I used for batch 1. i.e., can I use batch 1's view cart page, confirm page, etc for batch 2? or do I need to set-up a second set of cart webpages?

Your thoughts appreciated.

you can have as many categories as you wish in your items table, and only need a single cart

A common way of setting up a store is to have a products page, (which you can filter by category).

Selecting a product will take you to a product detail page, to choose size/colour options etc, and this is where to add the 'add to cart' button

Client doesn't want to use one products page for all items. Instead, client wants two separate products page.

Thus, to reduce my work, I'd like to use only one view cart page and checkout page for both products. Can this be done? or is it too tricky and I will need to create a new cart and related pages?

when you say you client wants 2 separate products pages...

do you want the pages to look entirely different (apart from their content)? or do they have the same layout.

if the page is the same other than the content, you can save a lot of work, (assuming the page is database driven) by having a single products page, which is filtered by category.

for example, your select statement would show fields from the products table, which could be filtered by category id, so that only products from the desired category are displayed.

the category id is passed to the products page using (for example) css menu writer, where the link would be something like...

products.php?category=1 or whatever.

you can take this a stage further and filter by subcategory too, all on a single page

Here's an example on a (early) work in progress, www.test.stonepits.com/

choose any item or subitem from under the 'products' menu, and the products page is filtered to show only the desired records.

There is only 1 products page.