Does anyone else have a problem with how AC handles pagination on teh category level?

I have some categories with 1,000 items all the way up to 20,000 items. We intend to make heavy use of the attribute system to allow people to narrow selection without having to be rigidly forced down a category path. With 1,200 items in a category, the pagination option shows all page numbers 1 through 60 taking up a huge amount of real estate. In our larger categories, the pagination controls take up 3 screen lengths before any products are shown (600 pages of products!)

In any other system I have used, as well as any site I shop at, pagination is generally handled like this:

 << < 1 2 3 4 .... 50 51 52 53 > >> 

as opposed to actually displaying EVERY page number. My only option is to suppres pagination entirely, meaning my customers cant view more than the first page of 20 items.

The sites cannot be launched until some resolution is found; I can't be alone with this problem, can I?

There is development underway to fix this issue.  It will allow you to specify how many pages appear in the paging area.

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Chris Allen
Software Developer
AmeriCommerce

I just saw it pushed to my site, looks great! My only criticism is that there is nothing clickable after you enter the page # to jump to, you have to hit enter. It would be great it the word PAGE was clickable to trigger that action as well. Great stuff, thanks!!

Just a side note for the community, if you do not want the text links, there is now settings on the theme that will allow you to replace the text link with an image of your choice.  Next and Previous image buttons basically.

 Another handy thing is you can use store text module to actually change the word Next and Previous to anything you like such as Forward/Back.  Feel free to change the text to "AmeriCommerce" and "Rocks" too...I'm just sayin!

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Ed Sturrock
AmeriCommerce Product Manager

Very welcomed functionality!

Here's some css tweaks I've used that might come in handy...

If you wish to 'neaten up' the size of the page selection field, centre the text within the field, and correct the horizontal alignment, you can paste/adjust this css info in your custom 'global css' area:

.ProductListPagingCurrentPageBox {width:3em; font-size:11px; position:relative; top:-2px;text-align:center;}
.CategoryPageNavigation td { color:333333;font-size:10px;background-color:none;padding:0px 5px 0px 5px;text-align:left;background-image:url(''); }  

I also agree that having to hit the 'enter' button to trigger the 'go to a particular page' needs a little tweak from a usability perspective. (Another idea might be to make the field a drop-down box... customer chooses the page from the drop-down which automatically triggers the 'submit')

 Cheers 

Thanks for the css tip! I dont think the page drop down would work fo rus, soem of our categories have 800 pages (hence why we really needed good pagination controls)

Ya, we have customers with as many as 5k or more "pages" in a category believe it or not.  Which is not ideal by any means in our eyes, but we're not the ones selling our wares on the internet so we always try to accomodate these extra large use cases.  One thing to keep in mind, a large dropdown of pages or really even 10-20, is just adding that much more bulk to the page.  A few extra k here and there that reduces seo keyword to html ratios, adds load time although miniscule can add up on a 100k a day visited site, and adds to bandwidth transfer too.  Those would be my main reasonings against a page dropdown.  I think a miniscule 'Go' button will be the way to 'go' here. ;0)

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Ed Sturrock
AmeriCommerce Product Manager

Definitley with you on that ed, thanks!

It looks great, however there is 1 problem.

Ithe text says 'show all' when really it only retunrs the next 100

 

Can you please have the text changed to accurately say "Show 100" instead of show all?