I'm setting up a swimwear catalog and I'm hoping someone can give me some guidance for setting up the products properly.
This is essentially what I want to do:
http://www.nafnaf.com/fr/robe.html/
I found this extension and it does pretty much the same thing:
http://cjmcreativedesigns.com/pre-select-colors-plus-swatches.html
I like this plugin because it does color swatches on the list and details page and on the layered navigation in Magento. The process for this plugin is to setup a configurable product (Swimsuit A) and a simple product for each corresponding color (Swimsuit A - Red, Swimsuit A - B etc). When viewing the configurable product (Swimsuit A) and you click on a swatch it will load all the images from the simple product and populate the preview and thumbnails.
Does anyone know of a way I can automate this somehow or know of a better way I can make the color swatches work without setting up tons of simple products? The only thing I've come up with is to use this plugin:
Automatic Configurables
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/automatic-configurables.html
Which will automate creating simple products for configurables.
If anyone has any feedback I'd be really grateful.
The idea of Configurable product is to have an attribute combination to be matched to a specific Simple product. In such a way:
You have real products, that represent a combination of options a customer can configure. Thus system can track separate inventories for all these products. And show that products in a search list as separate products.
The products are linked together, composing families of products. Thus it is possible for a system to let customer change some options of one product in a family, in order to buy similar product from the same family.
So, if you want to have different products at the list, ability to configure product at detail page, then you need to have physically different products in a catalog. There is no way to avoid it.
The possible ways to make the process easier are:
Use Automatic Configurables. Seems that it solves your problem. So
why don't just use it? :)
Use Import/Export Magento's feature to import pre-composed
configurables. Then you can try to automate task not on Magento
creation of products, but rather on generation of these lists.
Hire a Magento developer and make him create a generator for your
needs. This is not hard.
Switch from Configurable to Simple products with Custom Options. In
such a way you don't need to create Simple product for every option
configuration. But you lose inventory tracking, separate products at search list. And you lose granular combinations management. I.e. when having product with S/M sizes and Red/Blue
colors, Configurable may let you setup to have "Blue S", "Red S",
"Red M" combinations only (it means, you don't have "Blue M" product). While Simple with Custom Options will always make system to let user chose from full set of option
combinations: "Blue S", "Blue M", "Red S", "Red M". You don't have a way to tell system, that your inventory doesn't have a product with particular options combination.
Hope it helps.
Related
We're a little bit lost between configurable products, bundled products, using custom options, etc.
I'll tell you the result we would like to obtain:
We're a USB manufacturing company. And we want to sell custom USB keys via Magento.
We have about 50 different USB models available. For each model, the customer must be able to select the desired color (won't change the price), the desired capacity (1 GB, 2GB, 4 GB, etc - this will change the price, e.g. 20, 30, 40 % more of product's price). He must also be able to select the packaging of the key (eg box, plastic bag, leather bag, etc).
We want to use tier pricing, and show the price of the keys depending on the quantity AND on the capacity he selected.
A perfect example of what we want to do is: http://wowusb.com/plastic-custom-usb-flash-drive/usb-81.html.
We've tried using the SCP extension (Single Configurable Products), but don't really understand how to use it.
We don't really need to have associated products. One product for each USB model is OK, just having options (and tier pricing) on this one, just like the shop above.
Can you guide us on how to realise this ?
Any help will be greatly appreciated !
Thanks
The Simple Configurable Products extension will work well for this sort of thing, there's typically not a whole lot of configuration (just choose what parts of the configurable product you want to update when the user selects the options). The SCP extension will help greatly when it comes to tiered pricing.
To build a configurable option for what you are looking for, first you must make product attributes (drop-down type, global scope) for each attribute. This is in Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attributes. You would make one each for color, storage size and packaging. For each attribute you would add the different options available.
Once those are made, make sure to add them to the Attribute Set (Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attribute Sets) you will be using.
Now comes the work: You'll need to make a simple product for every combination available. For each simple product, you'll need to select the specific attributes created earlier, as well as set the tiered pricing for each simple product.
A rough idea math wise: 5 colors X 5 sizes X 3 packages = 75 simple products
This can be done via csv import, so that may save you some time, although you'll have to examine how tiered pricing is structured from within an exported list and copy it exactly. By the way, I recommend setting these products visibility to "Not Visible Individually", but don't disable them.
Now you can begin to build the configurable product. Once you start creating the new product, it will ask you which attributes to use, so select the color/size/packages and whichever else you want the products to be fine-tuned by.
Enter the general product information as normal. Price doesn't matter here (SCP extension doesn't use it).
Under "Associated Products", filter the grid view to find all the simple products you have created, and begin checking them off. If a product line turns red, it means that a product has already been selected with the exact same attributes.
Once you have a configurable product listed, you can play with the SCP extension settings (System -> Configuration -> SCP Config) to have the product behave as you want. The options under the Cart heading determines what you would like to display in the cart line. The options under the Product Page heading let you determine if you would like various sections of the configurable product to update with the corresponding simple product info (description, short description, main image, gallery images and additional info box).
When the user selects the last option, the product prices will automatically update, as well as show the tiered pricing box ("Buy X for $Y each and save Z%!").
One last thing, when using the SCP extension, do NOT add any "Custom Options" to a configurable product, they must be added to the simple products associated to the configurable product instead (Other product types are fine).
Is there any way to do this with Vanilla magento? I know I can create a configurable product with simple products "Product A - Option1, Product A - Option2 etc". Is it more beneficial to create simple products for colors and sizes? Maybe from a reporting standpoint?
I found this http://www.mageworx.com/advanced-product-options-magento-extension.html
Would there be any drawbacks from using an extension like this?
if you want to be able to properly track stock etc then proper configurable products based on simple products to represent SKUs is the best way.
in my mind, custom options are really meant for non stock related options such as custom printing services, extra gift wrapping or other options like this.
the extension you mention is really for managing sets of custom options across multiple products and makes custom options easier to manage but does not meant that you should use custom options to track different SKUs such as products coming in a variety of colours that you hold in stock.
The quickest way to create the simple products for a configurable product via the Magento admin is to create the configurable product first then use the "quick simple product creator" option to create the simple products quickly and easily.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/welcome_to_the_magento_user_s_guide/chapter_3#creating_a_configurable_product (scroll down a bit)
I’m setting up an online clothing store and have come across a huge problem:
When I make at product (a t-shirt for example), I want to be able to add the available sizes and colors, without having to create a product for every single option.
When I add a color or size, I need to be able to enter a SKU for each product, so I can tell which option the customer chose in the store. First I tried making 2 sets of attributes: “Color” and “Size”, so I could multi-select when adding a product. But the attributes didn’t show up as options in the store, as I had hoped.
I did a lot of searching, and found that some people used the “Costom Option” tab, to make fields for the available sizes, colors etc. - but I don’t want add those options every time I add a product. The multi-select feature I accomplished with the attributes, would have been perfect.
Also I found that someone was forced to pay for an extension to accomplish this - but as I am running on a very tight budget, so I really don’t want to pay anything to achieve this.
You can achieve this programmatically, observing the product save and generate all simple products of a configurable product. Unfortunately, you will have to manage stock for those items separately.
You can do this by creating a configurable products. For more information on how to create configurable products please refer to http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/tutorial-creating-a-configurable-product. You can refer to http://www.srota.co for an example.
i’m new to magento and was wondering if someone can help me.
i have a product that comes in multiple colors, but if i set it up as a configurable product it just gives the user the option of choosing a different color (but doesn’t show an image to him/her)
what i would like to do is have the other colors appear underneath just like up sells would (the same design)
if anyone can help me i would greatly appreciate it
Use the Simple Configurable Products extension by Organic Internet, as available for free on Magento Connect and your problem should be solved.
One way to accomplish this is to store images for each color of the project. With JS, you could auto-select color options on the page, and still make use of a configurable product for this purpose. You'll need to do significant template alteration to make this work.
Another approach is to use simple products (which you've already created in this case), and list them directly in the catalog. With Magento's cross-sell functionality, you can tag the products to each other and provide links between product pages for each color. Obviously, this involves more navigation for the user, but does allow you to manage each product independently.
Both of these methods will retain normal product relationships and track inventory for each color of a product, so they are preferable to solutions that involve hacking the framework.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joseph Mastey
I need to set up hundreds of products, each of which need an drop down that has from a few to twenty or thirty options so I refuse to use configurable products to set these up. I just want a product to use all the options in an attribute.
For example, I want to let customers pick from colors and sizes for a product, but I don't want to have to individually create products for each option. The pricing is the same for everyone and I don't need to track inventory for the options, so there's no benefits in using configurable products.
Is this possible?
Either use simple products and utilize the custom options tab (you will not be able to track inventory of each variant if you go this route). I have seen a number of ways to do this programatically via magento's product creation API or custom code. There is also a number of extensions that make it easier to to do but they do not fully automate the process. One of the automated ways to do it very fast can be found here.
The tutorial is setup exactly the way you want (color & size). Once you create this page make sure you are logged into the admin and open it with your browser. It will work it's magic.
Here are most of the extensions that do it, but they are not as automated as the custom coding methods such as the one linked above:
Product Creator
Automatic Configurables
Better Configurable Products
Perhaps instead of configurable products you could use simple products with custom options instead. There are even ways of importing products with options intact, most of the work is done by copy & paste in a spreadsheet which is much quicker.
If you're looking for a more programmatic way of doing things then you might think of making a custom product type which adds the same options every time so you never need to specify them again. Modifying the product type would modify all options at once too.
Yes, this is possible, just make attributes and note that this is a programming forum, for general questions head to magento forums
Simple product with custom option is not === configurable product as each option do not have Magento stock control, as you can never say Size "Small" sold out as there is no stock for options, that is the main reason why Magento has to use simple product to be the option of the configurable product as simple has stock.
If you have unlimited stock then using simple product plus custom option is the best solution for performance.