"See Also" Listing

[sdeniseg]

I'm using V8.1 and have encountered an interesting situation. I have implemented 'Subproducts' for many items, but need to go one step farther. I'd like to also have 'See Also' products listed for a few items. These are not actually Subproducts, but more, related items.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this? Any info/guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks much!

[JeremeD]

I have done this on several occasions.

What I usually end up doing is including a set of products using PHP.

1. Create a copy of your product template but change the [-- DEFINE PRODUCT --] section to output the "related products" the way you want them to look.

2. Set up your original product template to receive this include. Where you want the related items to show, put:

Code: Select all

[-- IF Product.Field1 --]
<?PHP include("[-- Product.Field1 --]"); ?>
[-- END_IF --]


[-- Product.Field1 --] can be changed to any other extra product field you are not using.

3. Create a page template with only the product loop. It would look like this.

Code: Select all

[-- DEFINE LINK_TO_PAGE --]
[-- END_DEFINE LINK_TO_PAGE --]
[-- DEFINE PAGE --]
[-- LOOP PRODUCTS --]
[-- PRODUCT productTemplateNameHere.ssc --]
[-- END_LOOP PRODUCTS --]
[-- END_DEFINE PAGE --]


The productTemplateNameHere.ssc designation is important. Change it to the name of the product template you created in step 1. If you assign the product template from step 1 to your products directly, it will change the way they look on your regular product listing pages. Specifying the template this way will use the new product template on the current page but not change the product's appearance when it's generated for normal use on other pages.

4. Now, in the Pages section create a new page and assign some products to it. Make sure to select your newly created page template in the layout section! Assign a filename to your new page and save it.

5. Now for the last step. In the Products section, find the product you want to have the related products. In [-- Product.Field1 --] or whichever extra field you used, enter the filename of the page you just created.

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For each product you want to have a set of related items, make a new page in the Pages section, assign the products you want, and put the page's filename in the extra product field of the product that will display them.

This may seem a little involved, but in practice it's very quick to work and super easy to maintain.