No categories, just products, on main page, with dropdowns

[dave_rave_old]

Hi, I hope someone can help me here.
I have oscommerce on my online store, and I want to replace it as it isn't working for my specific needs. I've looked at creloaded and now I've just installed osCMax on a local computer to see if I can get it to do what I want.
Basically, as I've obly got 3 products to sell, I want to eliminate categories. Each of my 3 products is available in 3 sizes and about 8 to 12 colours, depending on the product. In my online store, these attributes are handled by QTPro with dropdown boxes. If a size/colour combination is sold out, the item can't be purchased.
Unfortunately, when I got rid of the categories on oscommerce2.2, the QtPro dropdowns disappeared also, so that was no good
The 2nd thing is that I want the minimum number of clicks to checkout - no main page, no mention of account or password, just my products on page 1 with size and colour dropdowns and buy now buttons going straight to payment and thank you goodbye. At the payment part, I ask for the shipping address and phone#. If everything checks out to my satisfaction, I send the goods. End of story. At the moment, there's an incredible bunch of hullabaloo and mumbo-jumbo IMHO incorporated, which I want to ditch asap.
Anyone reaching my site from Froogle gets taken to the products page, so I'm gradually embellishing this to be my main page. So really, I want to eliminate the pages before this.
Also as my site is very ugly or so I've been told, I'd like to get a template system working, but right now that's not at the top of my todo list.
Any ideas, anyone. Be assured of my eternal gratitude - I've been wrestling with this for a loooong time!
Dave

[met00]

1) creloaded is hackable (if you want I'll send you the perl file that we found loaded in the /tmp directory that allowed it to be hacked)

2) oscMAX come with a nice template system

3) oscMAX has purchase without an account, so it can go directly to checkout without requiring an account

4) QTPro. Never used it so I can't help you there. But you can create all your products at the top without categories on oscMAX so that SHOULDN'T be an issue.

[dave_rave_old]

Hi-ya met00 and thanks.
RE: 4)
I like the look of oscMax so I made a fresh install of it on my local machine, installing my 3 products at the top, with my 3 sizes and my colours as options. But alas no dropdowns show, although I enabled multiple_dropdowns in admin/configuration/Product Information.
I'm fairly sure that if I re-instate the categories, the dropdowns will show up again. But I could of course be wrong.
So at the moment, the products can be "purchased" but size and colour can't ne selected!
Any more ideas?
Dave

[dave_rave_old]

Hi it's me again. Waiting 'n hoping for a suggestion as to why eliminating the category would screw up the attributes dropdowns. Possibly somewhere I need to edit out the word "categories" in a path?
I'm currently doing a text search in my entite shop folder for the term: categories/products. Then I'll edit out the term categories/
Is that a good plan?
Cheers
Dave

[dave_rave_old]

Too bad no-one could help me so far!

Possibly I didn't describe my problem very well.
I shouldn't have mentioned QT Pro because it's irrelebant to osCMax, which seems to have the same functionality built-in, in other words there are drop-down boxes for options such as sizes and colours.
My problem is that they don't show up if I eliminate the category, and just install my products at the top.
Why would that be happening?
Thanks for reading and look forward to expert advice!

Dave