"Paste Format" layouts

[Goz]

I'd like to see the equivalent of MS Excel "Paste Format" i.e. copy all the layouts used for a section or a product and paste them into another section or product.

[Duncan Rounding]

Great idea, add my vote too.

[Mike Hughes]

Confuses the hell out of me.

Aren't the layouts for products and sections defined by the layout you select? To change it to another one I would have thought you'd just need to select another layout at the appropriate level.

Clearly I'm missing something.

Mike

[Goz]

Confuses the hell out of me.

Aren't the layouts for products and sections defined by the layout you select? To change it to another one I would have thought you'd just need to select another layout at the appropriate level.

Clearly I'm missing something.

Mike

Absolutely correct (about what you're saying, not that it confuses the hell out of you!). But if you want to change a set number of layouts for a given number of sections or products across various sections (and can't use the Parent option), then this is a) a real timesaver and b) going to be accurate

[leehack]

I like this idea, although i think a 'use parent' and a 'use site master' (site options) would offer a better all round functionality addition. Sadly both are pipe dreams and never going to happen IMO.

[Mike Hughes]

Maybe it's just the concept of it being a 'copy/paste' function for something that's already defined that's causing me difficulty in understanding.

Would a similar thing be the ability to select multiple sections or products and then right click > set layout > to .... ?

I completely agree that being able to bulk change common properties across multiple products or sections would be a huge time saver. It ought to be quite easy really.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

...being able to bulk change common properties across multiple products or sections would be a huge time saver...

You've hit the nail on the head there Mike. I would like to select properties and multiple products or sections at once and do a bulk change.

[TraceyHand]

You've hit the nail on the head there Mike. I would like to select properties and multiple products or sections at once and do a bulk change.

ooooooh yes!
Whether it be price, weight or whatever!
This would be bloody fantastic!

[leehack]

+1 for me on that idea too. I'd like to see something clever with content categories also. So you set up defaults for a content category and when a product is logged to that category, it inherits those defaults - now that would be power!

[TraceyHand]

when a product is logged to that category, it inherits those defaults - now that would be power!

steady on, Lee

[brucet]

Thanks for the suggestions

The 'Paste Layout' idea seems quite elegant, and also quite intuitive, and might be the simplest and safest to implement.

I can see the benefit of something more flexible and more comprehensive, though. You might want to copy and paste some layouts but not others; or copy things other than the layouts - Related Products, for example. That would require a lot more work under the hood, though, and a bigger addition to the UI to support it.

I like the content categories idea, too, although that would require a lot of thought to the inheritance and the UI. You would need to either change the meaning of 'Use Parent' depending whether something was inherited from the Section of the Category - which could become incredibly confusing IWHT; or maybe grey out the option where the Category was being used.

Would you need a product to be able to inherit some properties from its Section and some from its Category? And would that differ between products, or could it be a site-wide choice, similar to the Duplicate Field Configuration? It could become almost infinitely complicated, depending on how much flexibility was needed. Just thinking about it gives me a headache...

I can also see the potential for some pretty messy pages, if you had products from several categories on a single page. But I guess that would be your problem not ours