Volusion Cart and URL Thumbnail Images Missing

Question

I am using the "Photo URL Small" and "Photo URL Large" values for all my images. Because of that, the thumbnail images in the soft cart and actual shopping cart do not appear. I contacted support, and they told me, "When using the Photo URLs to display the product images this will only generate the Product page and category page images, but will not auto fill the soft add to cart like the Image management section will." They recommended uploading each image to the Products Image Management section or using a thumbnail generator that they provide (which is not a good automated solution.

For the soft cart, I was able to remove the "no photo" image, which looks ok (I'd prefer the option of having the thumbnail here). For the actual cart, I was able to .hide the left-most cell where the image would go, but I'm still struggling a bit with formatting that table. Again, i'd really like the thumbnail image to appear.

I was hoping for a coding solution. I can get to the productCode values...just not sure how to find the Photo URL for a given product, through code. Once I have that, I can swap out the nophoto src for the real src of the img. This would have to be done for all products in the cart (or soft cart). Anyone know how to get the Small Photo URL if you have the productCode (through the code that Volusion exposes)?

I'm pasting what the HTML source looks like, where the productCode below is 1234567890, and the real image URL I need to find should be the Small Photo URL I used, like this one... http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517rdSvqtFL.SL160.jpg

<td class="v65-cart-detail-productimage">
    <img src='/v/vspfiles/templates/255/images/nophoto-0.gif'
        alt="" />
</td>
<td>
    <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" border="0">
        <tr>
            <td class="v65-cart-details-text v65-cart-details-cell">
                <font class="carttext colors_text">
                    <a href="ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=1234567890&CartID=1" class="carttext colors_productname cart-item-name">
                    <b class="cart-item-name">"Pedlar in Divinity": George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737-1770 by Frank Lambert</b><br />
                    </a> 
                </font>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</td>

Answer 1

You are missing your cart images because that is how Volusion works. They only offer you two image url columns in the product table. I found this to be very strange as well and since we are required to have cart images using those columns did not work for us.

Our solution was to name all product images using the productcode and uploading them to the FTP storing them in the photos folder. Using this naming convention allowed the system to find the images without having to be specified in the product url data.

keep in mind the different image sizes that will be required.

productcode-0.jpg productcode-1.jpg productcode-2.jpg productcode-2T.jpg

Those are what we use for our product image names. You can see it in action at www.802traders.com

Having 2 image URL's supported in the product table but more supported through other means makes this product table feature half baked. I mean why could they simply not add more columns or do an association table like they do for categories.