Kits, Categories and Wireframes

[hondo69]

Hang with me, this one's a puzzler.

I have products that come in different sizes, each at a different price:
3201 Plate - 10.01, 3202 Plate - 11.18, 3203 Plate - 11.60, 3204 Plate - 12.01

First, I create a "fake" base product: 320 Plates. I then marked the actual products as "hidden". Using a Kit, I added each real product as an option of the "fake" product using a radio button list.

This works best for my customers as they can see all size options and prices on one product page. All they have to do is click the correct radio button and add to cart.

320 Plates - Select Size

• 3201 - 10.01
  3202 - 11.18
  3203 - 11.60
  3204 - 12.01

But this approach is full of problems. First, the "fake" product needs a price so that some price is shown on the category page, preferably the lowest price option. Under the Kit options, you cannot override the "base price" of the fake item. So if the base price is 10.01 and they select size 3201, the kit adds the two prices together totaling 20.02. No good. I tried all the variables relating to price and they all add to the base price.

One solution (a bad one) is to make the real product's price add to the base price.
3201 +0
3201 +1.17
etc

This would cause us nightmares when it comes time to update pricing. We'd always be calculating the difference between base price and the prices of the different sizes. Not a good idea if you have several thousand items to update.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So I'm forced to scrap that idea completely and start over. Although it stinks from a customer's perspective, I decided to add a new category called 320 Plates. The idea being to simply list each real product individually under this category. I've only shown 4 sizes in this example, but my products really have about 12. It makes your eyes haze over seeing 12 nearly identical products displayed on a page, but as my only option I decided to proceed.

My troubles were only starting. After creating the new category, I reassigned the real products to this new category. Pretty easy, just click the check boxes shown in the wireframe that appears when you click the "Categories" button in product edit.

Then I decided to view my new creation Live. No new sub-category 320 Plates appeared. It just vanished into thin air. I went back to "Browse" my catalog in Admin and everything was gone. No new sub-category and no products. I don't know what happed to the products, they're just gone. Seems you can only go 1 level deep in AC7 when it comes to categories. Now I'm really SOL.

[jmestep]

Check this post for your kit price showing-- there might be others if you search:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=7391&hilit=option+price

Categories- Able does go more than one category deep. The default left nav doesn't show it, some category display pages might not show it, but that can be changed. The admin shows it, but I don't know what would have happened to your products- we've moved a lot of products around and they haven't disappeared. What build are you using?

[hondo69]

PLATFORM: ASP.NET VERSION: 7.0 BUILD: 9879

Thanks jmestep, I didn't see that post before but I've saved it now just in case I can use it later.

There's two basic problems at work here:

• Kit option doesn't work as it appears it should
  Displaying deeper category levels

KITS: When you add and item to a kit, you're given 3 choices as how it affects the base price: Use Product Price, Modify Product Price, Fixed Price. The problem is they all do the same thing, add to the base price. My feeling is if you have 3 options they should each cause a different behavior.

CATEGORIES: I just tried creating a new sub-sub-category and then added a product to it. Seems to work fine now. I even logged out of Admin and logged back in and the new category is still there. Don't know what happened before, but I'm guessing I have a real mess on my hands. If the missing products are still in the database somewhere, then I have to delete them somehow. Can't go and simply re-enter the items as we'll have duplicates in the database.

In general, I'm worried something larger is at play. I've noticed that quite often the software will "hang up" for 30-40 seconds and I get the white window that says "processing". While I'm waiting for action I'll click around to some other web pages to see if I have a slow connection, but that is fine. Since I only have a handful of products in might catalog right now, seems like it shouldn't hang up for so long. Makes me worry something else is wrong. I've never deleted the installation files, but not sure if the hosting company is supposed to do that or me.

[jmestep]

You can see if you can find any of your missing products by searching for Catalog --> Orphaned Items.
I periodically see a slowdown when working in the admin- I think it has something to do with the ajax routine, maybe dumping something from memory periodically? I'll do a few repetitive tasks which go fast, then there is a delay processing, then back to fast again.
For your kits, you just might be handling it wrong with starting out with a fake product. Why a fake product? Why not a real product with options? Then you can display with select boxes, or there is a product display page that shows an option grid.

[compunerdy]

Keep a eye on this bug
http://bugs.ablecommerce.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6991

The pricing issue is being worked on. The current patch they have fixes the issue part way but not all the way yet.

We need to be able to set the kit "master" item at 0 price but have it show the correct kit base price when viewed in gridview. That is what they are working on but so far they have only fixed it for when you have included-hidden or included-shown and not drop down options like you need. What they need to do is make it so for each option group the one marked as "selected" is added to the base price also. I have requested that they do this so hopefully it will be all the way fixed soon.

[heinscott]

This problem (using fake products to have selectable kit items) is definitely workable. And it ends up being not too big of a problem. Check it out... My dev site is up now... 76.12.100.221. I think that I am implementing exactly what you were going for. The "fake" product is set to a zero price, and the lowest kit option is used for the default price.
Look at my category pages... I used that mod to make the pricing display correctly. You'd have to use it again if you display a running cart, ect...
Everything else seems to be working correctly, however. If you need to see any code for any of this, I'd be happy to share it with you.

Scott Hein
http://www.poolgeek.com

[jmestep]

Did you leave the conditional code from the Show Product 1.htm scriplet when when you removed your reviews to the tabbed display? I took it out because I couldn't figure out how to use the nVelocity in a conlib, but my review submission works only when someone is logged in and I wanted to allow anyone to submit one.

[heinscott]

I'm pretty sure that I removed all the conditionals entirely for the reviews section. I just ended up adding the reviews section as a user control from my ProductDescription conlib. Something like this...
<%@ Register Src="~/ConLib/ProductReviewsPanelCustom.ascx" TagName="Reviews" TagPrefix="uc" %>
then...
<uc:Reviews ID="ucReviews" runat="server" />
I have my store set up to allow anyone to do reviews, regardless of whether they are logged in or not. For whatever reason, that's what my boss wanted.
Is this what you were looking for? I can dig out any other code you need if it helps.

Scott

[jmestep]

Maybe it's because I have causesValidation="False" on my tabbed display. Do you have that?

[heinscott]

I don't have that...
In fact, I don't think that I have anything special at all going on. I never ran into a problem at all with this, so, I'm not sure what's going on exactly. I just have the UC included in a placeholder, in a pageview of my multi-page. The tabstrip itself has nothing set, except for ID, spacing, CSSclass, DefaultLooks, Multi-PageID and runat.
Getting the review link above to open this tab took some work (thanks Joe!), but, getting it IN the tab seemed very straight forward.
Hope this helps.

Scott

[hondo69]

Yes, Scott, I can see how the mod is working for both the category and product pages. But I have a question regarding the items on the drop-down list on product pages.

Item #1 = 4.99
1 lb - single = 4.99
1 lb - 12 pack case = 35.00

Before building this kit, you need to make the 2 SKU's shown on the drop-down, then assign a price to each SKU. But a problem seems to exist when using these same SKU's again for a separate product.

Item #2 = 8.99
1 lb - single = 8.99
1 lb - 12 pack case = 60.00

You are assigning different prices to the same SKU's. Either that, or your using different SKU's that have the exact same description.

(sku# 101) 1 lb - single = 4.99
(sku# 201) 1 lb - single = 8.99

(sku# 112) 1 lb - 12 pack case = 35.00
(sku# 212) 1 lb - 12 pack case = 60.00

[heinscott]

What I do is this...
With the fake product, I set the price to 0. I have ONE real product, the single size of the item.
So, let's say I have:
BIOGUARD SMART SHOCK (fake product) (visibile, 2 kit items)
BioGuard Smart Shock 1 lb. (real product, price: $4.99) (hidden, tracked inventory)
BioGuard Smart Shock 1 lb. Case of 12 (this is just a kit option, using the BSS 1 lb. product as the real product, quantity 12, setting my own price)
In this instance, yes, I run into an issue where the price is NOT displayed on the category page, and that is where the modification comes in. I have had to modify the product price conlib, too, but only because I'm doing something special with it on my product pages.
So far, I haven't had any issues with this. Besides the pricing on the cat page, everything is working great.
Hope this helps!

Scott