I'm new to Zen cart and am editing an existing shop. I would like to display the dimensions of the products in the cart (ie width, height, length and a couple of product specific dimensions).
I've had a good google and the only methods I can find involve the shipping plugins ozpost (monthly fee I don't want) and Canada Post, but this is for a UK based site and it's nothing to do with shipping, it's just a selling point.
I can't find any plugins to do it, or examples on how to edit the code to add them in. I'd really appreciate any help on this...
There is a module that can do what you want: Numinix Product Fields
You'll need to utilize the optional fields, but it's RATHER simple to install and use. And, this module CAN be used for various shipping calculations if supported by the shipping module or you can modify the shipping module to support it.
If you just need to display the dimensions on the frontend and not use it for shipping, this is really straight forward. You'll just need to edit your includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_product_info_display.php and add a line of code to call for the dimensions. If you download the module, you'll find a sample file where you can see the code required. In your case (for dimensions), this would be
<?php echo (($flag_show_product_info_dimensions == 1 && ($products_length != 0 || $products_width != 0 || $products_height != 0)) ? '<li>' . $products_dim_display . '</li>' : '') . "\n"; ?>
There's an alternative - you can add additional properties to your products table in the database. You'd need to alter 4 core files, add one function and some language definitions. Keep in mind this is quite delicate and you really need to know what you're doing for this to work so I'm not gonna explain it here. I've done it quite a few times and I still get mistaken sometimes.
Don't forget to BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP! :)