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goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - March 03 2007 :  18:44:20  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Is there a way for customers to search by suppliers in addition to searching products by categories? The idea is to give customers the option to search for products from a drop down list of suppliers. I can see that there is a supplier id in the products table in addition to the supplier table. So I will expect that there is either an INNER JOIN sql code somewhere that is available.


If so please how can I turn this on in VPASP 6.X

If not, does anyone know what sub routine I need to add and where to right.

I still want the output to display in the shopdisplayproducts.asp as with seraching by products.

Many thanks

goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - March 08 2007 :  17:48:59  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Any thoughts please? I find it hard to believe this is not generating any interest :)

The view stats on this post shows zero, that is definitely not correct as I have viwed the post personally several times to check for response. Whats up vpasp admin?
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support
Administrator

4679 Posts

Posted - March 08 2007 :  20:00:22  Show Profile  Visit support's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi there,

There was a glitch with SQL 2005 and Snitz Forum which we have fixed now so the stats should read accurately.

Thanks
Cam

VP-ASP Support
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goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - March 09 2007 :  12:15:57  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
what about the original question about "Searching by Suppliers" Cam, you seem to be avoiding that all along. I sthat something VPASP can handle or does it require custom coding?

Thanks
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support
Administrator

4679 Posts

Posted - March 09 2007 :  13:09:56  Show Profile  Visit support's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Hi there,

You will need to custom code this one unfortunately.

There are lots of developers on this forum if you were to post a request for a quote and we ourselves offer a development service as well.

Thanks
Cam

VP-ASP Support
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 09 2007 :  14:30:17  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
you can use direct links in your side panels, eg:

shopquery.asp?supplierid=50

but as per cam's posting, a poplist would need custom-coding.

it'd be quite a simple chunk of code though (relatively speaking) - I'm tempted to knock-up a quick addon for it and sell it via our site seeing as we already have all the relevant queries/logic in our internal library for stuff like that. Similarly for an mfg poplist (although that might be slower to load than a supplier list as there's no reference table for mfg's so it'd drive from products instead).

How about an addon which has 2 functions that you can call; one for a supplier drop-down and one for an mfg drop-down? How much would anyone pay for it ? All suggestions/comments welcome!

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on March 09 2007 14:32:01
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saki
VP-CART New User

82 Posts

Posted - March 10 2007 :  17:28:52  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Could the dropdown value selection for these persist through the site?
In otherwords once I chose a manufacturer, as I clicked through product navigation only products from that manufacturer would show. More than a search but usefull. My 2 cents.
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goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - March 11 2007 :  11:29:34  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Will like to have the product display page show the result in a table format where the suppliers name is listed on the header and the products are displayed in columns of 3(or configurable number via the admin or via the page template) and grouped by cartegories. Something that looks like this:

Page header: Supplier name

Table header 1: Category 1
Table row1/col1: product 1
Table row1/col2: product 2
Table row1/col3: product 3

Table row2/col1: product 4
Table row2/col2: product 5
Table row2/col3: product 6

Table header 2: Category 2
Table row1/col1: product 7
Table row1/col2: product 8
Table row1/col3: product 9

Table row2/col1: product 10
Table row2/col2: product 11
Table row2/col3: product 12

_ - -- ----------------------
-----------------------------
-----------------------------

It may also be possible to have a product show up in multiple categories if the product is configured in the admin to be so.

Product features such as Price, Detail link (which should direct customers to the product detail page for ordering should also be available.

I will personally also like to see the supplier drop down menu have an option for "All Suppliers" as part of the select option. This should jump to a page displaying all suppliers in the shop/database with possible an image placeholder to show the photo or logo of the supplier as well as a link that takes customers to the page above where all the products for that supplier is displayed as specified above.

I believe this will be a wonderful addon to vpasp that everyone can benefit from. Remember the more search options customers have at their disposal in the shop, the more they are able to find products they need easily and the better the chance of a sale. VPASAP should concentrate more in improving the search functionality of the pac as well as providing more product search options in future releases. I have seen some other ecommerce sites that provide multiple search options for customers to make finding products easier. Examples includes but not limited to search by price range, search by manufacturers, search by keyword (one of the two default option in vpasp as of now), search by suppliers, search by size, search by categories (second default option in vpasp, etc.

Please dont get me wrong, I am not saying vpasp can ever satisfy all customers search strategies, but at least providing multiple search options that can be turned on/off in admin would go a long way in cementing VPASP leadership in the shopping cart market.

I am all for these add ons if we can get as many interested folks in joining me to finance the project. VPASP, Simon and other custom developers, lets know how much these will cost to code and we can all come up with the money. Who knows, if the cost is reasonable, I may even be able to pay the full amount of customization.
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MattSemi
Starting Member

11 Posts

Posted - March 11 2007 :  17:02:24  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm keen to have an add-on as described above. Please let me know if someone quotes it and if it's reasonable, I'm willing to chip in for it.

Regards,
Matt
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 11 2007 :  17:03:10  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
we're working on a search related addon at the moment. It has 3 main reasons for being built:
1) Sessionless paging
If you do a search (or look for products in a given category) and then use the page number links, and then open up another tab/window to look for products in another category, the paging links from one tab get confused with the paging links in the other tabs (eg you can't page through one category on tab "x" while paging through another category on tab "y") - we're doing an addon where the paging links don't use session values at all, so that you can use different tabs for different searches without them conflicting, and safely page through them.

2) Keyword Tools
An admin tool which optionally lets you put keywords on your categories, and which goes through your products and stamps the relevant branches' categories' keywords onto the relavant products. It's much more involved/wider than that but to sum up it's a way to help you auto-generate/expand/refine your keywords based on your existing data.

3) Related categories
Using the keywords from above, to show a list of related categories at the top of your search results.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - March 11 2007 :  17:09:09  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
If someone does want to have a specific chunk of code developed which would be useful to other people and could be sold as an addon, then we offer a "sponsorship" programme, which is where the "sponsor" pays for the development time at normal hourly rates as per any normal development job, and at the end of it we package it up and sell it via our site and they get a split from the sale of any units of the addon(s) sold.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - March 12 2007 :  23:37:53  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Ok Simon, I will be interested in that as mentioned earlier. Is the new search functionality going to address the suggestions I made earlier? If so let me know what the cost of the development will be.

Thanks
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MattSemi
Starting Member

11 Posts

Posted - March 14 2007 :  07:02:18  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Another suggestion for this addon is to add the "MFG" field to the main search function and an option in the advanced search.

Once again, I'm interested in contributing to this project - keep me posted. Mail me offline superyawn(at)gmail(dot)com.

Thanks,
Matt
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goshen
VP-CART New User

132 Posts

Posted - May 30 2007 :  00:00:01  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Any update on this Add-on Simon?
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dunpeal
VP-CART New User

70 Posts

Posted - September 10 2007 :  16:11:37  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Did you ever build this Simon ?
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devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - September 11 2007 :  18:55:58  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
it looks like one that slipped through the cracks; I've looked up the details/history and it seems that we did have a sponsor for it in the end but that we haven't progressed it, so there's still some sponsored paid time in-hand for it so that definitely needs jumping upon because it appears it got missed amongst various other stuff we were doing at the time.
Having looked at the sponsoring details, we'll be starting with a very simple version of it, which basically just has a poplist and/or set of links for each mfg and supplier, with the corresponding standard vpasp search links applied to those, and then we'd add more layers of logic as/when needed.
I'll look into it more tomorrow and get something released then; once we've got the basics released people can then try it and see if they need extra layers/logic added. Free upgrades are available for the first 6 months of purchase of any addon, so that kind of try-it-and-see situation should be ok because when people need extra bits we can add them if appropriate to the generic addon and then let people download the updated version after they've bought the original.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons
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