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Catalog
Product Catalog
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How do I build a product catalog using Kickstart 2?

Hi all,

I've struggled with Kickstart 2 for a couple of days now and I'm just about to give up and try some other E-commerce (maybe Ubercart?).

All I want is to build a simple product catalog. Example:

Computers
-Laptops
--Sony
--Lenovo
-Stationary
--Dell
--IBM
Monitors
-Led
-Lcd

...you get the idea. This catalog should be represented in a menu.

Simple task right? But honestly, can someone provide me with a guide that shows how to do this? I found some discussions regarding this, but not a single simple guide/tutorial!

I've worked with Drupal before, and was thinking that Kickstart 2 would be really simple, but I must say that it isn't! :-(

Asked by: Chucken79
on August 6, 2013

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Hi Josh!

Thanks for replying! I really appreciate it! Maybe you can answer a question regarding this.

Let me rephrase my first question:
If I want to build a product catalog like the one I described and I would like my sub/child categories to be listed as links for each category. I want a menu in a sidebar as well, but I want the first level of subcategories to be listed in the content.

Just simply list links to the subcategories (not list the products under the term), products should only be listed at the last level in the hierarchy. I think this is what many people want when building a simple web shop!!?

Based on what I have found on forums, my guess is that I should use a view for this.
What do you think is the preferable way to do it? Views? Can it be done easier in DCK2?

* How exactly should the view be created? (If I should use a view)
* Should I make 3 separate vocabularies? (Cat1, Subcat2, Subca2)
* Should I make just use one vocabulary with terms the hierarchy?

There are a lot of people asking about this and all the answers are the same: "Make a view and use contextual filter with Taxonomy Term....". But! I have not yet managed to find a guide/tutorial for how to accomplish this! What kind of view should be created? (Content, Taxonomy Terms, Product Display...?)

I mean isn't this really essential when building a simple web shop? This should be the very basic, but yet it seems to hard to accomplish!l Have I missed something? :-)

I would be really really really happy if you could give me some guidance! :-)

Best Regards
Magnus

Answer by: Chucken79
Posted: Aug 8, 2013
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Chucken79,

There are two ways to go about organizing your catalog.

1) You could use the Search API method that Kickstart 2 uses

For your site, you would need to create taxonomy terms that correspond to the "type" of product landing page you want. In Kickstart 2, these terms are found in the "collection" vocabulary: /admin/structure/taxonomy/collection

Next, you would want to create "sub types" of products. These are also a taxonomy and can be found here, under the "category" vocabulary: /admin/structure/taxonomy/category

Finally, you would want to create a "brand" for your products. These are also a taxonomy and can be found here, under the "category" vocabulary: /admin/structure/taxonomy/brand

Once you have your three taxonomies figured out, the trick is to create products that select each taxonomy. So a "Sony Laptop" would have the following terms connected to it: Computer, Laptop, Sony.

To make your catalog work the same as Kickstart 2 Demo store, then you will want to create a view that can handle the three levels of taxonomy terms as we described them above. For example, the first layer of taxonomy is just a menu item (thus it's in the url) and the second layer of taxonomy (sub-types) is grouped on the first layer page. For your example, you would click "Computers" and see "Laptops" and "Stationary" as sub-categories. In the "All Products" page that's where the "brand" taxonomy (or the third layer of organization) comes into play.

Using taxonomy would be ideal because "Sony" might produce both laptops and monitors. So a user could go to the "All Products" page and search for Sony to see what kinds of products you offer of the Sony brand.

2) You could build your own "bespoke" solution using Nodes and Menu

If using taxonomy and views and search api sounds too complicated (I'll admit it is a bit intimidating), then you could simply use the Drupal menu system and the Product Displays (the standard Products in Kickstart 2 are actually nodes that reference Products) to build out your catalog.

This video might be helpful: http://drupalize.me/videos/leveraging-menu-system

Josh

Josh Miller
Answer by: Josh Miller
Posted: Aug 7, 2013