Link manager is not available as a standalone addon, only as part of mini template system

Thank you
Leo

Yes, this is one of the future plans, to do some nice things as separate addons, I don’t know if link manager will be one of the first, but you can expect some nice things for sure

Your tips here are awesome keep going :-)
Tom

Mini template system is designed for osCommerce version 2.3.1 and will not work on any other older osCommerce version.

Same for the link manager and menu maker

Thanks for the indepth reply.

Personally I think it would be good to release this as a standalone addon, just my opinion.
I’m thinking that a lot of people may be interested in this particular addon (and any others you have coded) but not necessarily in the mini template system as a whole, I’m thinking of people that already use a template or those that simply don’t want the mini template system for whatever reason.

Perhaps you could have a section here that sells standalone addons?

So basically you would have 2 things:

1. your mini template system integrated with all the addons.

2. the standalone addons that would work on a default osCommerce.

Link manager and menu maker are part of mini template system and not available as a separate independent addon. This has not any technical reasons, it is just that I didn’t thought about to “release” it as a standalone package.

Mini template system is an addition to osCommece touches the core code of osCommerce very decently. Any part of it, like the link manager and menu maker can be installed and will work on any osCommerce store without any problems

Concrete:

1) Link manager: This is an almost 100% “drop on top” solution, there is only 1 core osCommerce file that need to be modified and this is because you need to place the link to the link manager pages somewhere in admin. Anything else are new files, the database changes are also done “automatically”, so there are no sql queries to “run”. There are absolutely no problems to install it on osCommerce even without having mini template system installed.

The point is now that the links and link groups, created with the link manager, need to be outputted somewhere on the store front. This is what the menu maker is doing

2) Menu maker: Both of the menu maker modules (main navigation bar and link boxes – there are more types of modules planned, like for example a “footer manager”) work in the same way as other osCommerce modules do, so basically they can be used anywhere. They would need to be, lets say “downgraded”, to be able to fit on a default store, in the meaning that some of the functions used in that modules will not work.

For example a link box “know” if it is placed on the left or on the right and adjust the flyout direction accordingly. This happens because it get some basic information “passed over” from the active template. In default osCommerce there is no such information available, so this function would not work and would be taken out.

Things like this, and others, would need to be set and fixed in the files, and any future modification would also need to be done in the file, for example in the case you decide to place a link box to the right column instead of the left, or in case you decide to change the store width or column width.

All in all a little more trouble than to use it within mini template system, but very well possible. Things that would be “downgraded” do affect display settings and not the core functionality. As said, the reason why it doesn’t exist as standalone is not a technical one.

I don’t know, do you think it would be a good idea to pack this together for a default osCommerce installation?