related products allows you to link to a hidden product

[pinbrook]

when adding related products using the marketing tab, if offers me products that a currently hidden - I consider this to be a bug - why would you want to relate to a product that can not be seen

[jont]

I always wondered about the reasoning behind that .. probably some technical database reason but from a usability viewpoint it is a little cack-handed to say the least.

[Duncan Rounding]

Does the link still show even if the product is hidden then or does it just allow to select a hidden product?

[jont]

It populates the marketing list fine but does not show on the product layout ... which makes sense to remove as this would be updated across the site should it be hidden.... thinking about it further ... I guess having it available does make sense as for when the product is shown again the marketing lists are updated across the site accordingly (users will simply hide the product if not available and then show it again when back in stock)

[leehack]

Yeah i think they've acknowledged it needs a tidy up as i reported out of stock items filling it also, which is pants. I think it's a good feature, just needs fine tuning now.

[jont]

I thought that also but having just looked at it again it makes sense to have it there ... the product will show and hide if it comes into stock or shown again... this will save a lot of site maintenance to leave the also / related lists alone to work naturally rather than remembering when Product A is back available to go and add it into Product X and Product Y.

[Duncan Rounding]

I think you should be able to select hidden and out of stock products but it just needs to skip the those ones and take the next available for the actual presentation. So if you wanted to have three related products you could configure 6 say then it would take the first available three or less. Something along those lines.

[pinbrook]

probably some technical database reason

more likely just not thought through

So if you wanted to have three related products you could configure 6 say then it would take the first available three or less. Something along those lines.

yes agreed, but there seems to be a few bugs within the marketing lists I though it would be wise not to add complications.

it would be all to easy to hide a product and not update the related products. We are all agreed we don't want to uplaod BS/NP/RP and AB every upload.

it just adds something else for a site owner to remember to do

[jont]

Nice thinking Duncan. If that could run alongside the wish list thread I started about the also boughts being populated manually to start with and then made "real" once sales begin (they slide out of the list with actual products) that would be a winner.

[leehack]

Im torn between removing these from sidebars/homepages etc. and having sections of their own, this way you can upload as often as you like, it is only affecting one page. Plus its a standard section layout option.

I've done this on the model shop to trial it, seems to work OK so far.

[jont]

I tend to now download throughout the day and set a scheduled task to down & upload at about 5.00am ... although I do not use stock monitoring so not essential to keep uploading throughout the day.

[pinbrook]

i only have BS and NP as separate pages

I do have also boughts and RP on all product pages as they are one page per product.

However we run split site processing ie orders are processed elsewhere so we only update AB once a month.

That gets us around the niggles i mentioned, but so many people use BS and NP lists on every page.

Personally I do not see the real benefit in BS on everypage as they are rarely related to the product pages, especially on a large site. we really could do with BS per section

[jont]

we really could do with BS per section

I asked this some time back but Actinic limited the marketing lists to a maximum of 20 products for speed of compiling the data ... hence me using the ListIndex trick to display different lists in different parts of the site... if this could be increased (without sacrificing time) that would be fantastic.