Section Specific List of Brands

Hi

I have created a variable called brand such that each product is assigned to a brand. I have a fairly standard list of sections and sub sections on the left of the store, e.g.

Bikes
Full Suspension Bikes
Hard Tails
Road bikes

Brakes
Rim brakes
Disc Brakes
Brake spares

etc...

What I would like to do is to add a list of brands at the bottom of each section, so that the example above would look something like this:


Bikes
Full Suspension Bikes
Hard Tails
Road bikes

By brand:
Scott
Specialized
Trek

Brakes
Rim brakes
Disc Brakes
Brake spares

By brand:
Avid
Shimano


etc...

So I want to list the brands specific to the particular section and the user be able to click on the brand and then get the products specific to that brand but also that category, e.g. if the user clicked on Shimano in the above exmple they would only see Shimano brake products, i.e. not Avid brake products but also not Shimano wheels or handlebars, etc.

Is this realistically possible and if so can anyone give e some pointers on how to do it.

Thanks

Paul

Its a manual task Paul, create the new sections and paste 'duplicates' of the master products into the respective new sections. i.e. you have a master of a product and then copies of it all over the place in various other sections.

Thanks for the info Lee.

Just in the process of doing this to our existing catalog. It is a real pain and IMHO would be solved if we could create multiple user defined marketing campaigns like Best Sellers.

I have had to create a master brands section where the originals of each product reside. Then copy products as duplicates into all of their "type" sections. This is turning a 600 item catalog into something like 1500 items of which 900 are duplicates.

Despite what it says on the tin 8.5.1 HUFA is having a problem with many duplicates and UDVs.

Once you have created this structure be very careful about moving sections around by dragging and dropping. Make sure you do regular backups of the db. Since I lost 50% of my content last week I am doing them hourly and it is a good job too as it did it again to me yesterday.

Originally Posted by wfl

Once you have created this structure be very careful about moving sections around by dragging and dropping.

Too true. I lost 2 months work due to this (it corrupted the database meaning I could not add a new section and then a product to any section) as the fault was only found once a new section was added (a rare event). Other than backing up it also proves essential to consider the overall structure of the site before starting.

And now with all these duplicates an upload from 8.5.1HUFA MU takes a full 45 minutes or more.

LOL Ali, you should be delighted with that timeframe. One of my recent builds takes 2 hours to have its pages checked and a full 8 hours to fully upload.

Imagine what i would say if i ever got asked can they have stock control? I reckon an item could go out of stock and come back into stock in the time an upload takes.

Originally Posted by leehack

LOL Ali, you should be delighted with that timeframe. One of my recent builds takes 2 hours to have its pages checked and a full 8 hours to fully upload.

Crikey - that doesn't sound very appealing.

About to press go on a 800 product line/2500 SKU shop, with a fair bit of duplicating (as described above)... And I'm wanting stock control.

What on earth is it that takes 8hrs to upload?

It's about 8,000 products with a lot of sections. I actually set my alarm 3 times to wake me up during the first upload, to make sure it was still working. Mainly because i had left it the night before hoping all would go well and it stopped about 40 minutes into it.

I think i'd rather find that the cat has crapped on my office chair in the morning than find out my upload didn't complete. So frustrating.

As the vast majority of my orders are done after office hours I set a windows scheduled task to download and upload with the updates set before I get to the office which saves a lot of time sat waiting for Actinic to clear.

I have noticed a difference of uploading sites between the vanilla Actinic themes (as supplied by a client) and then when I have stripped everything back into pure CSS.

Originally Posted by leehack

I actually set my alarm 3 times to wake me up during the first upload, to make sure it was still working.

You should time it around Hack Junior's feeding times

What kind of differences, marked ones or just nice ones? This site in question has a snapshot around 295mb and takes about an hour to snapshot.

It's like a sumo extraordinaire who looks a bit fatter than most.

Originally Posted by jont

You should time it around Hack Junior's feeding times

Don't talk to me about that bleedin dosser, got his mom's genes. Just finished his feed, the pair of em bloody snoring now. And what have i got? my old mucka Jonty.

Marked differences. The snapshot is around 175mb (v8.5.1 machine is off at the moment so can't check the exact size) and takes about 15 mins to snapshot!!

Originally Posted by leehack

And what have i got? my old mucka Jonty.

LOL - people pay good money to get what your getting for free

Mrs Jont has nadged off to see her mate so it's me and shorty fending for ourselves .... 4 hours of Star Wars Lego on the Playstation after school went down well though (no breaks for Corrie or Emmerdale LOL)