Handling category display in shop

I have the Hikashop business version and I am building my first shop with it.
One issue I encountered that no amount of searching has been able to solve for me is that I am getting different page views depending on where I link to a category from.
I have created a main link to the list of categories in the main menu. Additionally, as a drop down menu, I added links to each category.

When I click on a category from the drop down menu, the category page looks exactly the way I want it.

Conversely, if I want to navigate to the very same category from the Category page, the page I end up on has a completely different layout.
In my case, the link I create in the menu takes me to a page with a 4 column layout, title, description and category picture. However, when I try to reach the same page through the list of categories, I get a page without a title, without a description or cat. picture and with a 3 column layout.
I am obviously missing something big. It also tells me that in effect there are multiple view options for the same category listing.

In my research I found several posts where the problem was that the main menu link to each category were different from the links in a side menu, for instance. But that's not my problem and now with Joomla menu Alias in Joomla 3.0 having multiple links calling the same page with the same ID is no longer a problem.

My issue is the category page that gets called when a user clicks on a category listing from inside the category listing page.
In my site the menu link for one of the category shows me this link:

index.php?option=com_hikashop&view=product&layout=listing&Itemid=152

index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=category&task=listing&cid=13&name=jalapeno-sauce&Itemid=102

I think I am getting closer to solving this myself, but it is horribly complicated and unintuitive. If one isn't there, there is a dire need for an override layout that can be associated with all category links inside the system.

Right now, I have been able to make a single category appear both from a direct menu link and from navigating through a product category listing exactly the same. Except for the title.

While the tile of the direct menu link is "Fruit Syrups" as it should be, the title of the other category page his somehow inherited from the Category Listing page and in fact reads "Category Listing" While it should read 'Fruit Syrups".

I am clearly a rookie with this system, but having the layouts generated by unpublished modules seems a bit draconian to me. But there has to be a better way to having to create identical pages in this manner.

I really hope someone can show me the way because the help section is really not doing it for me. It's excellent in other respects, but in this one I am afraid it's not.

Hi, thank you for the replay. Sorry it took me this long to replay, I got an eye infection and could not work for the past few days.
The version I had was 2.2.0, but I just updated to the latest, 2.2.1. I would actually be very happy to give you a URL to check out, the site is currently working off a staging URL and the address is:

www.dadshotsauce.net

I'd be happy to PM you with Admin access as well if you prefer.

After the update what I am seeing is this:

I have actually 3 different ways to reach a single category listing:
1) On the home page I have setup a Module to display categories 1 per row with title, picture and descroiption for each category. This is actually the way my client wants that display to look. The link generated to a sample category from this page is:

http://www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=category&task=listing&cid=15&name=peach-products&Itemid=102

http://www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=com_hikashop&view=product&layout=listing&Itemid=187

http://www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=category&task=listing&cid=15&name=peach-products&Itemid=135

http://www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=category&task=listing&cid=15&name=peach-products&Itemid=135

I wanted to make a note that I changed the structure of the home page and I am planning of changing the structure of the "Product Categories" page as well. I may be calling it "store" and add things like best sellers or other ways to look at the products other than by category, since that's already on the home page.

ANyway, the core issue I am having is still there. If I click on Jalapeño from the main menu >>> Jalapeño I get a view that is correct. But if I click on Jalapeño from the home page, I now get a very similar view, except that the title of the page is inherited from the home page and there are only 3 columns instead of 4. Before I moved things around, I had changed everything to 4 columns so I don't know where this is coming from.

I'll keep working on it and hopefully I'll solve it on my own, but I still would love to read a few case studies of how all the different elements interact.

For instance, now on the home page I have products showing, below the category display that I don't want there. Obviously I activated them but I don't know how.

Thank you again.

Edit:

I traced the product displaying on the home page to the very same module I already deleted 3 times by now. This module is titled:

Associated products listing for category listing menu 135

Not only it is displaying below the categories in the home page for no apparent reason, but it is also unpublished. An unpublished module should not display, no matter what. I am new to Hikkashop but I am not new to Joomla. If I unpublish (or even trash) a module, I expect it not to display anymore.

is there a reason for this sorcery and how do I get rid of it?

is this behavior by design? I sure hope it's a bug because I don't see how overriding the publishing option of a module could be of any use. I have been dragging this module now for some time, I have deleted it, unpublished it and I actually ended up with more modules named the same than what I started with. I feel like Mickey Mouse in the movie Fantasia.

Anyway, my eye is really bothering me and I am giving up for the night. My goal tomorrow will be to get a handle on how links are created in Hikkashop, how they relate to each other, how pages are titles and how modules are assigned. I have way too many shops to build and if I cannot get this simple things I am doomed.

Thank you again for lending an understanding ear and please don't take my rants personally. I am frustrated, yes, but it's part of the job whenever new software is involved.

Well, I said I would give up but I couldn pt. I rebuilt the enter menu system and the menus work really well now.

My problem is that from the home page every category listed there leads to a page like this:

Title = Inherited from home page
Description = Correct description on page
Product = None. Empty.

I simply do not understand where the products are managed from. I am sorry, I hate being dense, but this is madness. All I want is a simple category display of the products.

Hi there,

Could you give a link to your website (and the supposed listing page) as well as a screenshot of your hikashop menu configuration? I think it's simple a problem of configuration, maybe you didn't selected the right category of forgot to set an option correctly.

Here are some link. I will post the configuration later, but I am not sure which configuration I am supposed to take a screenshot of.

1) Go to this link: www.dadshotsauce.net/
Click on any of the category names on this home page. You will see that the resulting listing are missing any product and the title is wrong as well. It is hineriting the home page title

2) Now, click on this link: www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=co...t=listing&Itemid=101
This is the link in the main menu called "Product Categories". Here the category listing does not look the way I want, but the resulting category pages look better (missing title but the rest seems fine)

3) Now, on each of those links above click on the item "Jalapeño Sauce" and compare with this link to the "Jalapeño Sauce" which is produced directly from the drop down menu off the "Product Categories" Link in the main menu:

www.dadshotsauce.net/index.php?option=co...t=listing&Itemid=152

This link above is how I would like all the category pages to look like. For the list of categories, I would like to have them all look like the home page at www.dadshotsauce.net .

As far as the internal pages, I'l be happy to create a superuser account and forward it via PM. There are just too many configuration pages for me to know which to screenshot.

Essentially, all I want is to have a list of categories on the home page, a set of links to each category in a drop down on the main menu and I would like the links to each category to display the same product layout and possibly for that to have the same URL so I don't have multiple URL displaying the same content.

I won't mind starting from scratch if I have a plan to do so, as I realize I made a mess of it so far.

Thank you for the kind response.

PS: All these links are also in my previous posts above.

I finally managed to solve the issue of how to display a list of categories without also displaying the product module below it.
The solution was simple: I created a link to the "Products" category. That created a list of categories in the page.

The problem I am having now is that when I click on any of those categories, the resulting page has no title. If I force a title on the category list page, that title is then hinerited by the following page.

SO if I have this listing:

Category page

I opened a new post to keep it focused on the titles.
www.hikashop.com/forum/product-category-...cat-page.html#123330

The topics there are two:

1) Category pages that have no title
2) Multiple pages to show same category