Filtering Product option problem

[OllyBug]

I have overlooked something very important. This is the problem with starting work on a site, leaving it for 6 months and coming back!

I am using product attributes and choices to use filtering.

i.e I have set up a colour attribute and each product will have a colour choice. This is easy enough. I have populated a section to show all products that have the colour attribute and the user can select the colours they want!

I have set up the attributes and filters (no components!) so a customer can toggle through all the choices they like. This works fine but here comes the stumbling block. It appears as though these choices are linked to the price properties of the product. For example, If a user wants to select a blue item, they can't add the product to the cart without selecting the choice.

go to: http://www.norfolkherbs.co.uk/shoptest/index.html then search by characteristic then colour.

When setting up the choices, I set 'HTML for Name' as blank so the option would be hidden on the product. I only want to use choices for filtering and not as choices for the customer to choose - if you see what I mean.

I also don't want global on off setting for this as I may have products that have price dependent options!

This must be possible as it is the only way I can see to make filtering work on my site.

[peblaco]

The way you have set it up with attributes then hidden it causes "Your price will depend on your choices below" because you probably have dynamic choices enabled which would normally show "Please Select" and there is no choice to select. If you do not intend to use attributes for product choices then it is easier not to use that method. You could use a new custom variable for filtering.

[OllyBug]

Hi Louise

Thanks for the fast response. I started off using variables for filtering but quickly realised that it didn’t seem to work. If I set up a variable ‘Goes well with’ and gave it choices of ‘Poultry’, ‘Beef’ and ‘Pork’ for example, Only one choice could be selected. For our shop, products could go well with all 3 options or just 1. This is why I used attributes and Choices as it works well. Colour was a bad example I used earlier as there is a definite answer to this as an item can only be one colour or another.

Are you saying that the error posted above can be sorted if a component is used? I have tried this for one of my products but the drop down choice box (even though greyed out) its still visible on the product page.

Currently each product is (or would have been) set up as:

Product
-Attribute (i.e colour)
--Choice (i.e yellow)
-Attribute (i.e goes well with)
--Choice (i.e Poultry)
--Choice (i.e Beef)

I did change it to:

Product
-Component
--Attribute (i.e colour)
---Choice i.e yellow)
--Attribute (i.e goes well with)
---Choice (i.e Poultry)
---Choice (i.e Beef)

I can't seem to have all the attributes etc invisible on the page.

Thanks again.

[OllyBug]

Update

Struggling to find a way round my issue. There must be a way of filtering to suit us

It is no good if each product page comes up with a whole load of drop down boxes showing the customer what they have filtered for (in my case anyway). I followed the user guide for filtering to do this but it was a shame I didn't realise that I would encounter the problem I have above.

I therefore fear that I am going to have to move away from attribute/choice filtering even though I have spent countless hours on it Shame because is beautifully simple to set up and edit (and you don't get choices reverting either!!)

Variable filtering relies on giving a product a choice parameter from a selection of choices from the given variable. This is fine for many filtered options but not when a product wants two or more choices applied. So given my example in an earlier post, one of my plants would have a variable of 'Goes well with' and choices of Chicken, beef, fish etc. I would then have to choose one of these for each product. However, one product may go well with 2 of these items....
The only way I can see to get around this is to have a variable for each of these choices and give a true/false value to each product. I think this just looks messy on the page especially when I could have 20 variables running on one filtered section. A neat list of check boxes that can be toggled look much nicer.

This is why i went down the product attribute route in the first place.....!

Perhaps someone has looked at this from another angle so if you are itching to put me out of my misery please do.......

It would be ideal if Sellerdeck could allow a product to have more than one choices.

Cheers!

[malbro]

Perhaps someone has looked at this from another angle so if you are itching to put me out of my misery please do.......

It would be ideal if Sellerdeck could allow a product to have more than one choices.

Cheers!

Your problem is that the hidden choice selectors do not provide a default selection when the 'add to cart' button is clicked so the code is insisting that the customer must make a selection.

You could solve this using a special layout for the hidden choices which has a predefined choice such as 'none' that is set as selected. This would keep Sellerdeck code happy and allow the order to proceed, the downside is the selection would appear in the cart and checkout.

[OllyBug]

Hi Malcolm.

Thanks for your input on this one.Sadly the choices would have to be invisible in the checkout too. A customer could buy between 8 and 100 different lines on the website in one go so if choices were visible, it could look a little weird!

I can't be the only one with a similar issue so hopefully filtering can be tweaked in a future service release.

[saucysal]

More than one choice in filter

Slightly off main thread, but I have got around the multiple choice of one filter by having, for example, Chicken, Beef, Chicken and Beef, in the choices for a filter. However, this could become cumbersome if you had Chicken, Beef, Duck, Chicken and Beef, Chicken and Duck, Chicken and Beef and Duck, etc.

Sarah

[OllyBug]

Now that isn't a bad idea and would probably work to some extent! May be better than having:

Chicken
yes
no

Duck
yes
no

etc...

Cheers!

[Dingo]

Hi Louise

Thanks for the fast response. I started off using variables for filtering but quickly realised that it didn’t seem to work. If I set up a variable ‘Goes well with’ and gave it choices of ‘Poultry’, ‘Beef’ and ‘Pork’ for example, Only one choice could be selected. For our shop, products could go well with all 3 options or just 1. This is why I used attributes and Choices as it works well. Colour was a bad example I used earlier as there is a definite answer to this as an item can only be one colour or another.

Are you saying that the error posted above can be sorted if a component is used? I have tried this for one of my products but the drop down choice box (even though greyed out) its still visible on the product page.

Currently each product is (or would have been) set up as:

Product
-Attribute (i.e colour)
--Choice (i.e yellow)
-Attribute (i.e goes well with)
--Choice (i.e Poultry)
--Choice (i.e Beef)

I did change it to:

Product
-Component
--Attribute (i.e colour)
---Choice i.e yellow)
--Attribute (i.e goes well with)
---Choice (i.e Poultry)
---Choice (i.e Beef)

I can't seem to have all the attributes etc invisible on the page.

Thanks again.

Hi Olly,

I have just come across your thread as I am having the same problem but with ages for toys, one toy may cover 2 or 3 age ranges.

Looking at your website you seem to have solved the issue of which herb to go with your chicken and pork in a very neat way, but I still can't work out how you have managed it.

Any help would be gratefully received.
Thanks

John
www.tickety-boo.co.uk