Filtering hidden products or sections

[saucysal]

I have a site currently live in V11, before filtering offered, where I set up the sections, for example, By Brand, By Thickness, By Quality, By Colour, each which subsections of the brands, thicknesses, quality and colours, and duplicated each product into the relevant sub-sections. The drawback of course is the customer cannot look at more than one at a time.

I would like to upgrade this site to 12.0.2 and introduce filtering to replace all these sections and sub-sections, and then hide the old sections and sub-sections. However, presumably sections and products have to be visible to appear in a filter. Hiding the sections which are filled with duplicates should be OK, but it would appear to me that I would have to keep the originals of the products visible. Do you agree?

A further complication is the By Colour. I have products, with the product visible, choices of colours of that product, and the individual colours are hidden products. The colours do not have names like red, green or blue, but have unique names like grisard, ebene, pourpre. At the moment, I have a section called By Colour, subsections for Red, Green, Blue etc, sub-subsections for the name of the product and its colour name, and under this a duplicate of the product, which gives the customer all the colour options including the one in question (not ideal). It would appear to me that with the new site with filtering, I will have to keep this By Colour section as I would have to keep the sub-sub sections visible, but could also have it in the filtering (by section). I am not quite sure about this. Any ideas?

[peblaco]

If duplicates were only created to allow users to view by type you can create those as custom variables on the original products and you would no longer need to keep the duplicates. You could set up a section like Brands which uses "make filtering the default view" and loads the products in from other pages. You need the products available on the site but they can be hidden see: How can I choose which sections to show in the Top Level Section List?.

[saucysal]

Thank you, great stuff

Thank you in particular for the link in the last sentence. Brilliant. I learn something new everyday.

Sarah

[peblaco]

If you are using a parent product with component / attribute / choices then the attribute can be automatically picked up on the filtering then set up a section. 1) Use "make filtering the default view" and add a property for the colour. 2) For colour choices on the sidebar - "make filtering the default view" and "Use filter" select a filter.

[saucysal]

Hiding sub sections in similar way?

As regards colours, I cannot do the first suggestion, as the colour names are each unique to each colour/hidden product, with thousands of them, not colour names like red, blue, green, in the Choices. The second suggestion of making every colour visible as a product is also not feasible. The products have up to 30 different colours of each, and you cannot have a sub-product of a product. However, I can still do it, I think, using the sub-sub-sections of a Colours sub-section that I already have, but just need to hide them from the customer.

Strangely, I followed the instructions you linked to of the posting in 2009 for not showing sections in the sidebar, and the True/False choice comes up in the General tab of the section, but does not actually work. As it happens, this is OK, as I still want the top level sections to show in the side bar. What I would like to remove are the sub-sections which appear on the page itself, as these are going to be replaced by filter options in the left side bar. Do you know how I can get these not to show?

Sarah

[peblaco]

You probably have the code in the wrong place, it can be dependent on the theme but the code does work. To remove sub-sections you would have to use the same blockif code which hides sections on the sidebar menu and place that around the section link layout.

[saucysal]

Tried every layout

I am using Fresh theme. When I click on a subsection name on the page, CSS Section Link Layout is highlighted in the design tree. I have tried putting the code (ie adding AND <actinic:variable name="ShowInSidebar"/> to whatever is already in the condition) to this (clicking on the Block if) and every other available layout that could be possible. I have the False/True option in the General tab of the sections and sub-sections, but selecting false does not hide the subsections on the page. I am running out of ideas.

I am abandoning the idea of a filter section to include colour, as well as brands, thickness and quality, as the colours are not products by sub-sections and this almost certainly could not work. I shall leave the present By Colour subsection in place for people who want it, but when doing the other filters, the filter result will show all the available colours for that product (there are colour swatch images next to each colour choice radio button, and this should be good enough.

Sarah