Guidance for creating product catalog please?

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Hello, I'm new to Hika and I see there are many ways to do things.
I have limited time and resources and I am hoping that someone could outline the best method to implement what I want to achieve. Maybe saving me from going down a lot of wrong roads and possibly my job

I am trying to create an online catalog of valves, I have attached a sample of my source material below.
I have many valves of which there are different sizes.
I would like to present them in a similar fashion to the image attached.
A heading some images and then a table showing the different sizes, part numbers, dimensions and prices.
(At first i will be publishing this without prices, the shop feature I plan to enable at a later date)

As I see it to achieve it I have a number of options.

1. I could create a category for each valve and and a product for each size and somehow list them all under the category as a table.

2. Characteristics. I could use a brief walk-through to achieve my goal with this method.

3. Custom Fields. Again I could use a brief walk-through to achieve my goal with this method.

4. My final option is to create the tables as graphics and place them in with the product. I would lose my future shop and pricing functionality but it could get me going for now. I would rather not do this.

Thanks in advance to anyone prepared to help me.

C.

Hi,

I would recommend option 1.
It's the simplest to implement.
Just configure your categories and products, and then in the settings of your products listing menu item, set the "sub element filter" setting to "group by category" and the "layout" to "table" and that will display something similar.
Then, you can just customize the file "listing_table" of the view "product" via the menu Display>Views if you need to add additional columns of custom product fields to the display of the tables like on your screenshot.

Thank you,

The first part was clear to me but the second requires modification of php files?

"Then, you can just customize the file "listing_table" of the view "product" via the menu Display>Views if you need to add additional columns of custom product fields to the display of the tables like on your screenshot"

I think this may be beyond my skill set. Would those changes be global? as some products will have different columns, eg not all would use the flow column but may require different data.

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

The changes will be global, but with the correct code, there is no problem in having different columns for different categories of products.
Here is a thread explaining how to add such columns to the table products listing:
www.hikashop.com/forum/2-general-talk-ab...fields-possible.html