Thread

Hi there.

I’m about to choose a CMS for a big site and I have the following request from my client and I’m not sure how or if this is possible with EE. BTW - this would be my first site with a CMS (just tested around with Wordpress before):

My client ( a technical company ) has different products for different purposes (WLAN, Voice over IP, LAN, Network tools, etc). They want some kind of product filter where the user click some radio buttons to choose what the product should do and by pressing a “go/ok” button the site should present him the best suitable product with all wanted features.

My client calls it a Product Configurator - but I think it is more a product filter.

It would be really great if someone could tell me if something like this is possible with EE.

As I said - I’m currently in the process of selecting the right CMS. Just as an info: the CMS which I’m also thinking about is ModX and typolight.

Thanks in advance for your help

Cheers
Duffy

Hi, Duffy, welcome to the forums!

You would need to build a custom module for this, mostly likely.  Or some custom solution specific to your project.  ExpressionEngine has an 1.6.8 and 2.0 PB development API for this type of need.

Here are some trial options so you can try out EE for yourself.

Hi Lisa,

thanks for your reply. As I first read it I gave up on ExpressionEngine as I’m mostly a Designer who also can code and not a Coder who could create a custom module. I switched to ModX when I read that it can export data via the XML format which can be imported in flash. So I thought there was my solution as I know a bit of ActionScript coding.

I really wanted to use EE so I looked if EE can do the same - so as I read the interview with iVenus. So this was my final choice to go with EE again.

So back to the special request of my client to build some sort of product database / product configurator. As I’m a newbie with EE (tried out the core version just yesterday) I can only suggest how it could work. So please excuse my very theoretical questions.

Would it be possible to store all product information like

- product name
- product description
- product details (WLan=true/false, VoIP=true/false - something like a “yes/no” switch)

inside EE, export this data as XML and do all the logical stuff in flash.

Or is there an existing module which already can do this - for me this seems to be like an advanced search in a product catalogue and I would be very surprised if I’m the first one with such a request. I hope you get what I’m looking for.

Thanks very much in advance for your help and I’m looking forward to your reply.

Cheers
Duffy

Would it be possible to store all product information like

- product name
- product description
- product details (WLan=true/false, VoIP=true/false - something like a “yes/no” switch)

Yes, you can create custom fields to store this information.

inside EE, export this data as XML and do all the logical stuff in flash.

Yes, you’d create an XML template to do this.

They want some kind of product filter where the user click some radio buttons to choose what the product should do and by pressing a “go/ok” button the site should present him the best suitable product with all wanted features.

My client calls it a Product Configurator - but I think it is more a product filter.

This is the part that would need to be custom.  Storing the products and their information, and having that content output in XML is possible out of the box.