Catalog question

11 replies [Last post]
Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

I am setting up a children's clothes store, and have configured the catalog rougly into these categories:

- Boys/girls
- boys
- girls

- Type
- pants
- shirts
- skirts
- etc

- Size
- small
- medium
- large
- etc

- Brand
- brand1
- brand2
- etc

So far so good... Customers can click one of these main categories and see all the stuff underneath.

But here is what we really would like to do: is it possible to create nested categories? By this I mean people can first select whether they want to see clothes for boys or for girls. Say, boys. They see everything for boys.
Then, they choose the type, say, pants. It gets narrowed down and they see all the pants for boys.
Finally, they select the desired size, say, medium. Then they see all the boy's pants in medium size.

Is such a thing possible, feasible?

Hope I am not asking too much, I will definity try to share my knowledge as well... not just ask.

Joined: 10/31/2007
Juice: 255

Hi Sophia, there are several ways to do what you ask. Probably the easiest one is configuring the catalog taxonomies to allow selecting more than one (I would say it's "multiple selection" in english). What that means is that you can classify a product inside boys, shirts and medium at once.

Another issue is listing products corresponding to several categories. You can create a menu on the form www.yoursite.com/taxonomy/term/22 (or taxonomy/term/22 is you have activated $base_url) which offers a page listing all the nodes related to the taxonomy term number 22. You'll have to figure which id numbers have each one of the categories you have set up. That's exactly the same that does the catalog blog of ubercart, since it's listing nodes for each categorie. The nice part is that you can make a link to taxonomy/term/22+31+... and now it will show up all the nodes related to all this categories. If you find those url are ugly then use path modules to rewrite the url.

Hope that helps Smiling

Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

Thanks ever so much jorditr, I find taxonomy as difficult subject still, but I will see how I can set it up, thanks for the nudge in the right direction!

Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

Ahem, I have spent several days reading all the Taxonomy pages in the Drupal site and I asked this question in their support forums, but I can't seem to get the hang of it. I am not a programmer... I just don't understand how to set it up. Please, be so kind as to give another nudge...

I understand how to combine categories, such as girls + size small; I even downloaded the module taxonomy filter to make a visual choice.

But... here is where I get stuck, how do I implement that in the catalog? Or do I have to write my own menu for that, in that case, how do I create it in such a way that the customer gets guided through the three levels?

Joined: 10/31/2007
Juice: 255

On the Category admin page you can create as many vocabularies as you want. Ubercart already creates one, a very basic one indeed: Catalog. Later you can create as many as you need. And look, editing the vocabulary you force drupal to show them every time you edit a node of the types you select here. Every vocabulary you create, edit and select "product" nodes will show this vocabulary when you edit the node, under the body textarea and format.

You can have as many vocabularies as you want related to one concrete node type. Even you'll see inside the vocabulary editing that this concrete vocabulary may be mandatory or not, it means you'll be forced to select an item on the list when editing the (product) node or keep it without tagging. And even more, inside the vocabulary editing you'll see that you may allow to select one term or several, which means that you'll be able when editing the (product) node to select only one entry on the terms list or several.

Now, if you're catalog includes categories boys and girls under gender, and categories S, M, L, XL under size, if you allow on your vocabulary catalog to be able to select several terms for a single (product) node, you'll then be able to edit a product for boy and XL, and two entries on the table that registers that data will be added. Thus you´ll be able later to list all products on taxonomy/term/number-for-boys, by taxonomy/term/number-for-XL or a combination of both as I stated on some previous message.

Maybe it's a long explanation, I hope it makes sense Smiling

Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

Oh you guys are fantastic... with such a clear and full explanation I should be able to tackle my most confusing subject... thanks!!!

Joined: 09/06/2007
Juice: 461

this is where you may lack understanding! A vocabulary that is set up in admin categories holds a set of taxonomy terms like pants, type, boy girl. Then you tell Drupal what nodes (better node types) like page, story, product can get tagged with one or more of them.

so, what you want is not a taxonomy term pants, since you want boy-pants and girl pants, right? Eye-wink Good.

So you do now want to go for pants showing boy and girl pants ...

Thus you create a taxonomy tree that hold different pants meaning each human term pants gets a different tax id below since it belongs to a different branch of the overall tree of the vocabulary! Pants are not pants...

Therefore you create a vocabulary that has as levels of depth thus you tell drupal that it is no simple one, a click in the edit section of the category "shop tags" for example..

The point being is when you now add tax terms to your vocabulary it asks you where it is to be placed like in menu tree. Then you YES name twice the teram pants, but once you put it under boys and the second time under girls. The breadcrumb path above the product on display then shows you, like this boys - pants - XXL - By Lewis.
You folks then click on a tax path links as above and just get what you want them to see..

Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

I read your explanations several times and I must admit I don't get all of it, but I think I'm slowly getting there... what about this:

Created 3 categories: Gender, Type and Size.

Category Settings:

Types: All my product classes
Hierarchy: Multiple
Related terms: No tick
Free tagging: No tick
Multiple select: Tick
Required: Tick

Terms:

Under Gender two terms: boys and girls
Under Type several terms: pants, shirts, skirts, etc
Under Size several terms: small, medium, large, etc

Then, as Jorditr said, I have to find a way to present taxonomy/term/number-for-boys etc, right? I always thought the catalog only showed the terms under catalog, but I guess I was wrong. Also I tried to understand what oslinux said about creating the term pants twice, but I didn't quite get that yet...

Hope you don't think I'm thick, I really wish to understand this subject once and for all Smiling

Joined: 11/17/2007
Juice: 58

After many more hours of sweating, here my findings lol.

There are a few catches to using several categories... the biggest one is you can select only one category to use the catalog with. Ever since jorditr released his awesome grid module, I wouldn't have it any other way, it displays everything just the way I want it. Another reason, I found out that when I create other categories I can't add term pics as I can with the catalog.

So even though the single category with multiple terms in multiple levels is absolutely less than ideal, atm it's the only solution I see... with my limited understanding anyway.

I have looked at just about all the posts and explanations on the Drupal site about taxonomy, but they are either too limited or too complicated, and never a step by step explanation how to do what I am looking for. Isn't there anybody else who uses a categorized webstore that guides you to what you want in just three clicks?

Ok here is another way of putting it, in slightly different terms to get away from clothes for a moment, lol. Suppose I have a webstore that sells items that are blue, red and yellow. These same items could be small, medium and large, and square, round and triangle. So I could have a small blue triangle, or a large red square, any combination of the three is possible.

So when people visit the site, they would be presented with a selection (buttons in a grid) to click on color, size or shape. They know they want blue! So they click color and then blue, immediately they see all items in blue. That is too many! Now they narrow it down, they have a choice, either by size or shape. Round, for sure. Ok, they see all items that are round and blue. Still too many! They want a medium sized product, so they click medium. Voila, just what they were looking for, every object they see now is blue, round and the right size!
Any combination is possible, another customer might be looking for something that is definitely square, size and color are of secundairy importance, so they go about their selection in a different way. In all cases, they get guided through their selection and in just a few clicks reach their goal.

The catalog does this partly, you can select the three main categories, say shape, size, and color (or, in our case, gender, type and size). Then you get a subselection, in case you choose gender and then boys, you see ALL the boys outfits and that is all there is to it. We can live with that, but if the catalog could do all of the above, we would be soooooooooo happy!!! I can't possibly be the only one with this wish?

I have played with views as well, and yes you can create selections like that, but truth be told, they look like hell......... and they are not really user friendly at all. Customers (which in our case will likely be housewives with young children) wish to see nice looking buttons, not horrible looking selection tools that look like they need a course in programming, heh.

Not trying to bug you guys, but I am really stumped, and hopefully my questions will help others too... thanks ever so much for the time you have given me already. Jorditr, your module rocks, in fact Ubercart, even though still in its alpha stage, is by far the very best webstore software I have ever seen. If what I want in fact can't be done, I am still happy with what I've got!

Joined: 10/29/2008
Juice: 16

This is pretty much exactly the functionality I'd like as well, and I'm having no luck getting it working.
Sophia's explanation is good, where it lets you drill down and filter your results. It just seems that the Taxonomy module is not being used to it's full potential this way. The way I see it, you should create a vocabulary for each different attribute type.

example:

Vocabulary:Color
-red
--crimson
--magenta
-blue
--sky blue
--navy blue
-green
--forest green
--lime green

Vocabulary:Size
-xlarge
-large
-medium
-small

Vocabulary:Shape
-round
--oval
--circle
-polygon
--square
--tetra
--octo
-line

Each item would pick a term from each vocabulary.
The catalog page would present you with all terms, grouped by vocabulary.
If you select red, it would either show you all red items, or show you all of the other terms associated with all the red items, so you can then narrow it by another vocabulary.

I love drupal and ubercart, but I feel like this should be a default setup.

Joined: 08/07/2007
Juice: 533

You should consider using the apachesolr module for this. It allows you to perform faceted search based on any cck field. You could just re-theme the search results to display product teasers.

Joined: 10/29/2008
Juice: 16

That looks very cool, I'll try that.
Thanks!