Thread

I’m working on building a product database in EE (maybe I should look at another solution) and I’m struggling to figure out how I will organize my setup.

Any ideas or tips would be very much appreciated.

Here’s what my requirements are:

-Multiple product types (Books, Audio, Ebooks, Apparel, etc)
-Each product type will have numerous sub-classifications that are specific to their type. I.E. Format (hardcover, softcover, ebook, etc), Audience Age (age groups listed), and so on… These sub-classifications would change based off their product type (so Format:Audio download wouldn’t show up under Apparel)
-Some of the sub-classifications could group products from multiple types together, like a series or collection. Example: Chronicles of Narnia being a series, and there might be books, audio, apparel and gift items all together under this series…

I’m just struggling on how to start off, I’m sure once I get the categories/field groups set up I can go from there. I am experienced and have FieldFrame and Playa installed, I’m sure I’ll be using these for this. Other extensions/modules I have are: Low Seg2Cat, Structure and Simple Tag that may be of any use… not sure

Any ideas? Thanks!

Depends on how big this collection would be and who would be allowed to do what inside the system as well as how the search will be built. All of the organizing in back end is worth nothing if it can not be reflected through search and presentation.

1. You can create a weblog per product type and then use categories/subcategories to organize it all. Again, depends how many product types you will have.
2. these could very well be custom fields or or a categories selections
eg. drop-down field with values: hardcover, softcover, ebook where user selects one. If it can be categorized as more than 1 then use categories rather than custom field.

I have not used FieldFrame and Playa so I can’t suggest how exactly they would fit in but they Will make your life easier when it comes to creating/adding fields on the fly as well as making 1-many relationships between entries
eg - Chronicles of Narnia
———book 1
———book 2

For now I would suggest pen and paper…seriously, write out the logic into big chunks and remove the modules you have installed as they will only spin you in circles.
Get the core setup of how you would like to store data then reach for FieldFrame and Playa to enhance it.

I will second the suggestion to use Categories and Subcategories for organizing your products, a Weblog per product type, and then entries for each product within a type.  I assume you will be selling these items?  If so, you may want to look at Simple Commerce very carefully because it is indeed “simple”.  If Simple Commerce will not do it for you, you may end up with a third party solution, e.g. FoxyCart, that will require a different approach to product organization.

Thank you very much for the suggestions, I appreciate it. This isn’t a store, although I could easily turn it into one if I needed to. It is for a database of products for retailers to see and get materials of all products we make and sell to carry in their stores.

Thank you once again, I’ll get crackin’!

Moi? No matter what they say I would assume it is a store (cause it is - people will be shopping, they just might not be buying). Therefore, I would avoid having multiple weblogs per product. I suppose it’s possible to do it otherwise but at some point you have to have a single master list of SKUs.

The shopping cart metaphor is well established. There’s a reason for that 😊