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.
Related
I want to sell a product with 8 colors and two sizes.
Making a configurable product means making 16 simple products!
When I need to update the prices, I have to update the price of 16 products!!
Using the bundle product and adding the size and colors (for the customer to choose) has the limitation of quantity (I need to know how many products with the specific color is left).
Is there any other way to handle that?
For this i think creating a custom option for the product would be the best idea. It is easier to create and very helful in these type of situation. Think about that. If you have same options for other product than there is an extension called Custom Option replicator which will help you to replicate the custom options.
Hope this will help.
I have "Size" as a custom attribute for products. The question is, how can I add the size data while adding a product to the cart and checkout, so when the admin sees the order, he becomes aware of this information?
Thanks!
There are two possible ways.
Use custom options. For size this will not apply correctly (I'll explain why below), but for some kind of data it could be particularly useful (e.g. save logo placement or other attribute which can not be represented by a physical item). For custom option tutorial you can use this link.
Use Configurable product. For attributes like size or colour it's the best option. It has few benefits compared to custom options - automatic stock management for your options, ability to assign different pictures, and you don't need to recreate the whole set of options for different products. Here's the official tutorial -> tutorial.
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.
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.