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Crumplezone
Starting Member

United Kingdom
12 Posts
Posted - April 06 2005 :  06:27:34  Show Profile  Visit Crumplezone's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Sorry if this has been answered before, or I'm just being dumb.

I'm using VPASP for the first time and I'm having a little trouble getting my products and categories organised right.

I'm building a cart for a seller of darts and accessories.

There are products from 4 different manufacturers.

There are 4 categories of products - darts, boards, flights and accessories.

Each manufacturer has products in each category.

When the user selects a manufacturer (from links or drop-down menu on the home page), I want it to take him to all products from that manufacturer (fairly obvious). Another possibility (preferable) is that the user will be given the option of selecting from the 4 product types from that particular manufacturer and then being shown all products from that manufacturer within that category.

When the user selects a product category(again from links or drop-down menu on the home page), I want it to show products from all 4 manufacturers in that category (again fairly obvious).

I suppose this means that each product has in effect, 2 categories, product type and manufacturer.

I'm having trouble working out how to achieve this. Can anyone help please?

greatphoto
VP-CART Super User

USA
304 Posts
Posted - April 06 2005 :  07:37:45  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
You'll do well to draw out a tree of what you're after to make sure you really understand for yourself what you want.

Yes, you'll likely need to put each product into multiple categories to achieve this. VP-ASP does not allow sub-categories to appear in multiple categories. You'll just build the entire tree of categories and sub-categories so that it represents each way that you want customers to be able to click through to your products. Each manufacturer may need to be under multiple product categories, and each product type may need to be under multiple manufactures to get what you describe. I'm not sure exactly what you are after, but it sounds like you may need 32 different sub-categories: one for each combination of 4 product types and 4 manufacturers times 2 different ways to get to them. This can get pretty complicated. Realize that if it is complicated to lay out, it might also be complicated for your customers. Do you really need all these different ways to get to your products?

Once you have mapped out and created all your categories, add each product to each of the relevant categories and sub-categories. To add a product to multiple categories, hold down the <Ctrl> key while selecting multiple catgories and sub-categories in the edit product entry page under shop administration. Both the category and the sub-category have to be selected in order for the product to display correctly.

Notice below that PRODUCT X shows up in multiple categories and sub-categories:

 
ManufacturerA
  |-ProductTypeA1
  |-ProductTypeA2
     |- PRODUCT X
  |-ProductTypeA3
  |-ProductTypeA4
ManufacturerB
  |-ProductTypeB1
  |-ProductTypeB2
  |-ProductTypeB3
  |-ProductTypeB4
ManufacturerC
ManufacturerD
ProductCategory1
  |-ManufacturerA1
  |-ManufacturerB1
  |-ManufacturerC1
  |-ManufacturerD1
ProductCategory2
  |-ManufacturerA2
  |-ManufacturerB2
     |- PRODUCT X
  |-ManufacturerC2
  |-ManufacturerD2
ProductCategory3
ProductCategory4


We should probably lobby VP-ASP support to modify the product to allow sub-categories to be associated with multiple categories as this would simplify things a lot. However, I think this may be a major change to the design of the cart.
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts
Posted - April 06 2005 :  07:39:54  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
other people might have different/better ideas, but something you could try is to ignore the manufacturer column on the products, and instead create sub-categories for each manufacturer under each category, and create sub-categories for each category under each manufacturer-category.

this'd mean a doubling up of some data on the reference-side (categories), but you'd be able to use the category poplists/breadcrumbs as-is and just place the products in all the relevant categories/subcategories in the product admin page

I just noticed that my reply was posted at the same time as greatphoto was posting his reply; I think we're basically agreeing on the same overall structure for categories.
Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on April 06 2005 07:41:51
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Crumplezone
Starting Member

United Kingdom
12 Posts
Posted - April 18 2005 :  06:30:56  Show Profile  Visit Crumplezone's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Thanks for the advice.
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