In a recent post I waxed lyrical about how great custom product types are in Zen Cart.
One thing that has bugged me though is the fact that when creating a new product you have to train the web site adminstrator to make sure they select the correct product type when first creating their product (otherwise its a painful process of having to edit the product_type value manually in the db backend to undo it…)
So here is how to make your new product type the default one that gets created:
1) Edit the following file: \admin\includes\modules\category_product_listing.php
2) Locate the line:
echo ' ' . zen_draw_pull_down_menu('product_type', $product_restrict_types_array);
and comment it out by putting // at the start of the line
3) Add the following next to the other lines contain the html for hidden inputs:
<input name="product_type" type="hidden" value="X" />
where X is the type_id of your new product type as added in the
product_types table
Et voila. The dropdown no longer appear in the Product listing page in the admin and when the user clicks on the New Product button the product type is automaticlly your custom one.
Hurrah