Can you make custom product pages with multiple options?

[zeus1337]

Someone please help me! I can't wait to get my store running!

I sell video games, both new and used. If I wanted to sell a game, and I had both new and used copies of the game, is there a way to have it come out like this?:

http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/Product ... t_id=20679

Where if you click on an item, all the different conditions come up for it? Or is this not possible yet?



TO THAT DEGREE

Can you set up subcategories? If I wanted to sell PS1 games (1st category) could I have sub-categories, such as (Factory Sealed) and (Used)? Or do I have to make two categories such as 1) PS1 Factory Sealed games and 2) PS1 Used games?

I would really like to set up subcategories, if possible.

Any help would be amazing.

[Jim]

I would create 3 products, one the main product with the complete description. one the New product with any info and price that related to that item and one the used product with any info and price related to that item.

I would then assign the new and used items to the main product. Then in the product template have a loop subproduct section that displays the subproducts along with the information from the main product.

You could assign the main product to a page (category) that displays all of the information for the main product including the subproducts. Then you can also assign each of the subproducts as separate items to category pages of New and Used so you would have a page that displays all products, one that displays just new items and another that displays just used products.

[zeus1337]

If I were to call the number on the main shopsite page, could I get someone to walk me through the process? I am new to this but very anxious to get going soon.

I'm just unsure of how to implement a lot of this.

[zeus1337]

I suppose the hard thing to figure out is exactly how to set up the template. Will I have to do this for every single item?

[Jim]

The advantage of using templates is that you create it once and then it is used over and over so that you don't have to create new code for every page or product.

Once you have decided how you want your pages to look you create the html for that look and then insert the ShopSite template tags to place the page/product information in the appropriate place.

If I were just starting out with a store I would use one of the built in ShopSite provided templates to get the basic feel of how pages and products work. That way you can get your store up and running quickly.

Once you have your store running you can work on creating new templates for your page and products to have a look that is more specific to your needs. You may find that you just need to make a few changes to the ShopSite template or that you want to do an entirely new on. Using the ShopSite provided templates you could have a store up and running in just a few hours. Designing a new template from scratch can take many hours. I have worked on one that took over 100 hours and another that took 30 hours. For my own store I just used one of the ShopSite page templates and modifed the product template to meet my needs and that only took a couple of hours. Designers may charge from $40 to $100 or more per hour so you can see that it could be in the range of $100 for a simple change to thousands of dollars depending on how elaborate your site design is. There are also companies that sell template designs just for ShopSite that may be a reasonable option. Check http://shopsite.com/partners-tools.html for links to 3rd party developers that offer ShopSite templates.

[zeus1337]

I am familiar with the concept of templates, I just don't know how to write a generic one for my products, if all of my products are going to have sub-products. Is there really code to do this easily? I just don't see how I can write HTML to do what I am describing. Anyway, I am familiar with the templates that ShopSite provided, I just need to get one that suits exactly what I want before I go nuts with listing. I am not capable of doing this myself, I'm can't get any help with something like this over the phone?

[Jim]

Support for ShopSite is provided by the hosting company where your store is located, not directly from ShopSite. But generally something such as template design and implementation is not provided even by the hosting company because there are too many variables involved. But implementing a template isn't as hard as you are making it out to be.

Lets go back to the beginning and look at the page that your referred to http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/Product ... t_id=20679 .

Lets just look at the product area since that is what you seem to be wanting most.

Breaking it out it looks like there is a table with a row at the top that contains the product name and the brand of game that it is. Below that is a row that contains a picture of the product on the left and to the right of that the 2 subproducts one on top of the other in a table. The subproducts are also tables with the top row containing the type of product (new/used)
The next row contains the price and add to cart button. The next row contains some text and add to wish list, The next row contains either nothing as in the New product or some text explaining about the product.

So to create the product template lets start with the product part.

Code: Select all

<table>
 <tr><td></td><td></td></tr>
 <tr><td></td><td><table></table></td></tr>
</table>

Now lets flesh it out a bit by putting in the tags the generate the particular information needed.

Code: Select all

<table>
 <tr><td>[-- product.name --]</td><td>[-- product.field1 --]</td></tr>
 <tr><td>[-- product.graphic --]</td>
<td><table><tr><td>[-- loop subproducts --][-- subproducts -- [--end_loop subproducts --]</td></tr></table></td></tr>
</table>

Ok, so much for the product part now what about the subproduct

Code: Select all

<table>
 <tr><td>[-- product.field2 --]</td><td></td></tr>
 <tr><td>[-- product.price</td><td>[--product.add_to_cart --]</td></tr>
<tr><td>[-- product.field3 --</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td COLSPAN=2>[-- product.field4 --]</td></tr>
</table>

That gives the basics of the layout for the product and subproducts. Now to put it in template format.

Code: Select all

[-- define subproduct --]
<table>
 <tr><td>[-- product.field2 --]</td><td></td></tr>
 <tr><td>[-- product.price</td><td>[--product.add_to_cart --]</td></tr>
<tr><td>[-- product.field3 --</td><td></td></tr>
<tr><td COLSPAN=2>[-- product.field4 --]</td></tr>
</table>
[-- end_define subproduct --]

[-- define product --]
<table>
 <tr><td>[-- product.name --]</td><td>[-- product.field1 --]</td></tr>
 <tr><td>[-- product.graphic --]</td>
<td><table><tr><td>[-- loop subproducts --] [-- subproducts -- [--end_loop subproducts --]</td></tr></table></td></tr>
</table>
[-- end_define product --]


In the code above I assume that:
product field 1: brand of machine game is for
Product field 2: new or used
product field 3: shipping message
product field 4: additional text such as guarantee

If you don't have a version of ShopSite that includes those fields you could use what ever fields are available and maybe include more complete information into a single field and modify the template to just use that field.

This doesn't do any formatting of the text with styles but if you view the source of the sample page you referred to you can see how that is done. If you have something such as front page to do your initial layout you can just use the html that is generated in that program and insert the template tags in the appropriate place like I have done above.

Hope that helps.

[zeus1337]

I spent all day on this, and I am just now seeing what you are saying. I have been spending a lot of time working on the site today, but will have to take some time to look at what you suggested tomorrow.