by Jim » Mon Oct 12, 2015 10:23 am
All of the custom template now have separate sections for page links and products. In the really old C code based templates it was useful to have the ability to have products listed separately from page links. That is what the setting on Pages > Edit Page Layout > Page Arrangement Settings > Products on top was used for.
With the introduction of the custom template language it was now possible to better define the layout of product sections and page link sections using the [-- Loop Products --] and [-- Loop Links --] template tags. There is however also a loop section that will out put both page and product information in one block [-- Loop Items --] This template tag does use the Page Arrangement Setting "Products on Top" and will switch the layout of links and products depending on if the box is checked or not. Using this loop items tag, however, you lose the ability to specify separate templates for the layout of products and links which you have when using the [-- loop products -- ] [-- product template --] or [-- loop links --] [-- link template --] .
You might experiment with the the [-- loop items --] block of code to see if that might meet your needs. I think your workaround may be a better way to go though since you can then use the optional 'template' for the link and product layout to format items differently on different pages.