I product per section redesign question

[pierre66]

Page per Product Site Redesign via Import?

I have been following this thread as I plan our site redesign. We have over 750 items and many of them are in the Product|Component|Attribute|Choice format. We also replace about 2/3 of this catalog every Spring and Fall! So it is a big development job and I need help with a couple design/development technique questions...

First, we want to adopt this thumbnail duplicates page/one product per page layout. I think I understand how to do that based on this and other threads but have not started building/testing yet. Can someone point out the difficulties I may have since we use the Components structure? Is there a better solution out there for handling our vast Product/Color selections?

We utilize stock tracking and have a great little solution for keeping stock current via an external link (and live with the Actinic problem of allowing orders of quantities greater than that set in the component).

Second, how elaborate can I get with importing this whole new product line? I have used importing quite a bit in the past but then needed to go in and build all the components/attributes/choices...VERY time consuming! We keep our master product catalog in an Access db and can tweak that now (before the fall items get keyed in) to allow a more "robust" flat file that might include the fields necessary for a more thorough import file...Meaning down to the duplicate and component|attribute|choice level.

Am I dreaming? And setting myself up for a major nightmare? Should I just plan on manually building the structure after importing the base products? My goal is to simplify and expedite this catalog overhaul process that we perform twice a year.

Thank you in advance for your suggestions and feedback!

[chivalry21]

Hi,

We've just completed restructuring the actinic perl scripts and actinic templates to give 1 product per page on all products with no javascript required.

You can see a working example at http://www.charlottenaturals.co.uk/ we would appreciate any comments or suggestions.

If there is enough interest we can perhaps release the source code.

Andy
_________________
Red Paint Multimedia

[Luddite]

Sure - i'm interested. Not being that techie I don't fully understand what you've done, so will wait for some others to give feedback.
Nick

[GiganticDays]

Could I revive this thread and ask a question related to its original topic?
I have my site set up with 1 product per section with a thumbnail page containing images and descriptions linking to the main product pages.
What I thought I could do was amend the Act_SectionLink template and add "NETQUOTEVAR: PRODUCTPRICE" after "NETQUOTEVAR: SECTIONNAME" to display prices against each thumbnail, however this resulted in the display of the text "NETQUOTEVAR: PRODUCTPRICE". What did I do wrong?

[Buzby]

Hava a look at one of my sites www.quality-titanium.co.uk

If this is what you are after regarding thumbnails then I can send you one of my templates.

Regards

Jason

[GiganticDays]

Thanks for that but I already have the layout done similarly, what I need to do is show prices on the thumbnail page.

[pinbrook]

What I thought I could do was amend the Act_SectionLink template and add "NETQUOTEVAR: PRODUCTPRICE" after "NETQUOTEVAR: SECTIONNAME" to display prices against each thumbnail, however this resulted in the display of the text "NETQUOTEVAR: PRODUCTPRICE". What did I do wrong?

I don't think you can use product info at section level.

the only way to disply prices etc with a section is to create a customvar. This of course means double input

[Buzby]

I didn't have to use customvars just all the netquotes used by Actinic, see below.

http://www.quality-titanium.co.uk/ac...um_Silver.html

Product info can be used at this level although I have removed all text and just use the [LINK] command to show the view details link.

Kind regards

Jason

[jont]

Jason - Graeme is wanting the information at the Section Level .. your examples are at the product level (the next level down in the tree) .... as Jo pointed out the product NQV are not available at the level above unfortunately so have to be either hand typed or use a CUSTOMVAR

[Buzby]

I am assuming the text and image displayed are generated from the section details page then and not a product duplicate.

Would it not be easier then to overide default settings in layout to none in order to remove the current content and then make a page of duplicates?
This way you can use all the netquotes for price, information etc.

This is how I managed to get a price and add to cart button with the image.

Regards

Jason

[pinbrook]

Jason, Using your site as an example, use the left hand nav, select Titanium pendants, stay on that page where you have 2 sections, ie Gents pendants, Ladies pendants. It is here that Graeme wants to show a price. These are sections, thus do not have a product price related to them.

You have a price on the NEXT drill down page ie product

[GiganticDays]

So if I want to use a CustomVAR do I have to create a new one for each product and give it a separate value (price)? I tried giving one CUSTOMVAR the value "NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTPRICE" but, of course that didn't work

[jont]

create a new CUSTOMVAR eg: SECTIONPRICE and add that into the Act_SectionLine.html template and then specify the value eg £9.99 against each section in the properties tab .. you could possibly automate this in a spreadsheet to save masses of typing

[pinbrook]

customvar is for the price at section level and you will have to type in the price by hand in the customvar field in the section dialog box, this is what i meant when I mentioned double input in my previous post.

in your scenario, you have one product per section, hence you will have to manually type the price of the product into the customvar field at its section dialog box

[GiganticDays]

Thanks John and Jo, but with over 6000 products, that's a non-starter. I'm going to have to go down the duplicate products route - at least then also I get to include a buy now button on the thumbnail page and I can do it with just a little extra tweaking of my csv file import (I hope!)