Multiple Product Template with Subproduct SNAFU

[Gavin Guest]

Here's the situation that is bothering me, and I hope that will be resolved
in a future release:

0. Let's pretend that I sell chairs and beds on my store using ShopSite
v7.1.4.1.

1. I have two product templates for chairs and beds - Prod_Chair and
Prod_Beds respectively.

2. I assign each product in my catalog the appropriate template.

3. *Publish*

4. Everything looks great with my chairs using Prod_Chair and my beds using
Prod_Beds. Smiles for everyone...

5. Chair_1 looks smashing with Bed_A, and I want to cross sell using
subproducts.

6. So, I assign Chair_1 to be a subproduct of Bed_A.

7. *Publish*

8. Chair_1 now uses Prod_Bed template instead of Prod_Chair template.

9. I double-check the back office and Chair_1 still has the template of:
Prod_Chair assigned.

I need to be able to assign subproducts to products with disparate Product
Templates without ShopSite changing the subproducts Product Template to
match the parent product. Maybe I could get a toggle switch for this option?

Regards,

Gavin Guest
Graphic Design
Ebeacon.com

[Jim]

Gavin
You are mixing 2 scenerios here, subproduct and cross-sell.
Subproducts is what ShopSite was originally designed to do. A good
example of a subproduct is a product called Asprin that has subproducts
which are a bottle of 50, bottle of 100, bottle of 250 etc. The
templates work good in this instance.

The cross-sell scenerio is really selling two totally unrelated products
and trying to link them together. As you have noted the templates don't
work particularly well in this instance if they are using different
templates.

From the custom template tag cheatsheet
(http://www.shopsite.com/help/8.0/en-US/ ... oduct.html)
the purpose of the [-- SUBPRODUCTS --] tag is "Create the Subproduct
information by invoking the Subproduct section of the current product
template"
Note the "current product template" part of the statement. So the
template used will always be the one of parent product.

To get around this and have certain products use a different layout you
could define the code for two or more differnt layouts in the [-- define
subproduct --] section and have a variable set in the product
information to determine which layout section to use. Say you set
product.field1 to be chair, bed, dresser, etc. In the subproduct define
you would have code something like this.

[-- define subproduct --]
[-- if product.field1 chair --]
put the layout for your chair here
[-- else if product.field1 bed --]
put the layout for your bed here
[-- else if product.field1 dresser --]
put the layout for a dresser here
[-- else --]
put what ever you want to do if it isn't a chair, bed or dresser here
[-- end_if --]

[-- end_define subproduct --]

You would need to include similar code in each of your product templates
in case you assign a bed to a chair or a chair to a dresser or chair to
bed etc.

Jim


Gavin Guest wrote:

Here's the situation that is bothering me, and I hope that will be resolved
in a future release:

0. Let's pretend that I sell chairs and beds on my store using ShopSite
v7.1.4.1.

1. I have two product templates for chairs and beds - Prod_Chair and
Prod_Beds respectively.

2. I assign each product in my catalog the appropriate template.

3. *Publish*

4. Everything looks great with my chairs using Prod_Chair and my beds using
Prod_Beds. Smiles for everyone...

5. Chair_1 looks smashing with Bed_A, and I want to cross sell using
subproducts.

6. So, I assign Chair_1 to be a subproduct of Bed_A.

7. *Publish*

8. Chair_1 now uses Prod_Bed template instead of Prod_Chair template.

9. I double-check the back office and Chair_1 still has the template of:
Prod_Chair assigned.

I need to be able to assign subproducts to products with disparate Product
Templates without ShopSite changing the subproducts Product Template to
match the parent product. Maybe I could get a toggle switch for this option?

Regards,

Gavin Guest
Graphic Design
Ebeacon.com