Hot Picks - Please help!

[canrise]

Hello and happy new year to everyone at this amazing forum.
I recently join AffiliateWindows, downloaded and installed the v3 Community Edition and everything seems ok, I am ready to incorporate my template in order to request live but the only problem remaining is the HOT PICKS.

I have hot picks working on my main site: zolacompare.com but don’t seem to have it work on my vertical sites tailored for specific categories such zolamobilephones.com.

I searched through the entire forum on hot picks and got the correct code as described bellow but my hot picks can only work on certain category IDs, it won’t work on any of the category I need such as:

1. 99 Health & Beauty
2. 285 Insurance
3. 61 Computers & Software
4. 347 Telephones & Faxes
5. 281 Finance
6. 586 Tickets
7. 328 Travels
8. 173 Gifts, Gadgets & Toys

----the code I am using----

$oRefineBy = new stdClass();
$oRefineBy -> iId = 99;
$oRefineBy -> sName = 'Category';
$oRefineByDefinition = new stdClass();
$oRefineByDefinition -> sId = 99;
$oRefineByDefinition -> sName = 'Health & Beauty';
$oRefineBy -> oRefineByDefinition = array($oRefineByDefinition);

$oHotPicksParams->aActiveRefineByGroups = array($oRefineBy);
$oHotPicksParams->iLimit = 18;

include_once('elements'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'hot_p icks.php');

So please help put me in the right direction!

Tim.

[GeorgeGaz]

Hello,

Does the code function correctly for other categories such as 521 (which I think is games?).

If the code is correct and it is just those categories that are not working then I guess it is to do with the merchants that you are signed up to. Possibly they do not have hotpicks.

Regards

[canrise]

Yes 521 is working

[GeorgeGaz]

Hello,

Can you PM me some of the merchants that you are working with that are within category 99 so that I can see if they have any hotpicks.

Long shot, but you just never know :)

Regards

[Andy]

Hotpicks are managed by the merchants and sometimes you'll find that your merchants haven't added any products as hotpicks to the category you want.

If that happens and you have hotpicks box hard coded into your page, it can really mess up the design.

You can either:
have a condition where the hotpicks box only displays if there are products to display (add the condition into the Smarty template)
OR
have a check in your PHP to see if anything has been returned and if not, add an api call for random products from within that category and treat them as hotpicks instead.

You appear to be comfortable with this stuff, so I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to do this.