Discussions

Architecture question Taxonomy/Product type

Hi,

I really can't figure out how I should do the structure of a web shop I'm working with.
I can create different Product Types for all products.
I can also use Taxonomy and have a nice vocabulary for all product types.

The question is, which one of the methods should I use? Both?

I want to create a view to list a specific type of products, and maybe taxonomy is good to have then? And all products are just of the type "Product".

I would really appreciate some input!

Posted: May 24, 2012

Comments

joshmiller Josh Miller on August 7, 2013

This would be a great question to put in the Q&A section of the site. That being said, I think it's a matter of choice. Typically questions like this are hard to answer without more information. Do you have four kinds of products or four thousand? Do you think each kind of product will have different kinds of information (fabric color vs. Hard Drive capacity) or will they have all the same kind of information (we sell all kinds of fabrics by the yard)?

Generally, products are better organized using taxonomy terms when they share very similar characteristics (selling fabric). On the other hand, products are better organized using different product types when you have somewhere between 2 and 15 kinds of products. If you have more than 15 kinds of products, then it might make sense to architect your one product type to handle every kind of product.

Josh