Product multiple custom fields (best practices)

[EvanGR]

Hello,

We are preparing an overhaul of our products catalog, and I want your suggestion for our product's custom fields.

We run a car accessories shop, and we want to designate the compatible car manufacturers for each of our products.


A good way to achieve this would be to have a preset list of car manufacturers, and then for each product, select one or more of the manufacturers which are compatible. (like you would add tags from a list)

It is preferred to not have to type the manufacturers again for every product (to avoid misspellings).

We also want to be able to use a 3rd party Filtering solution (e.g. Custom Filters Pro), to filter products suitable per car manufacturer.

Important note: the example given here is NOT about the manufacturer of the product (of which there is one), but for the car manufacturers the product is compatible with (of which there can be many)

Any suggestion on a good way to implement this, is very welcome!

Thanks

EDIT#1:
Another possible way to do this, would be to use product Categories instead of custom fields. So we can create a Category for every car manufacturer, and even add nested sub-categories for specific car models.
Not sure of the drawbacks of this method though...

[GJC Web Design]

we do it like this

https://www.4wdpartshop.com.au

[Studio 42]

You can set a list of values for customfields using the As Adminlist option.
You can see then a list in product edit customfield

[diri]

Working with manufacturers and categories is fine as long as manufacturer offers products for one category only.

In case a manufacturer offers products in multiple product categories (i.e. cars and fan clothing) you are in trouble doing it this way.

[EvanGR]

Thank you all...

@GJC
This was one of the ideas we had. Place Car Manufacturers in categories, with models being in sub-categories.
The products belong to a different main (canonical) categories, based on their type and use. But since a product can be assigned to secondary categories, this should work.

Questions on this approach...

1) Are there any pre-made/available lists on Car Manufacturers and their models we can use and import? So that we don't have to waste the time to do the same work again ourselves.

2) If we do the work and create the car manufacturers/car models categories ourselves, could we later export this data in some other form to be able to use it elsewhere?

Also, if we use a product AJAX Filtering module, we would want to be able to filter all products by Car Manufacturer. Not sure if this would be an option, if we implemented it via Categories (as opposed to custom fields).

[balai]

Since you intent to use Custom Filters and i suppose that you also want dependencies and pre-created values, have you see that?
https://breakdesigns.net/extensions/joomla/dependent-custom-fields-for-all

[EvanGR]

Since you intent to use Custom Filters and i suppose that you also want dependencies and pre-created values, have you see that?
https://breakdesigns.net/extensions/joomla/dependent-custom-fields-for-all

Yes, we have already purchased a subscription.

We wanted to look for a native Virtuemart solution first. To avoid locking ourselves too deep into custom 3rd party extensions (this specific task may require a lot of time investment if we decide to include Car models data, so we need to think it through very well).

[GJC Web Design]

1) Are there any pre-made/available lists on Car Manufacturers and their models we can use and import? So that we don't have to waste the time to do the same work again ourselves.

sorry -- don't know

If we do the work and create the car manufacturers/car models categories ourselves, could we later export this data in some other form to be able to use it elsewhere?

simple enough either by DB directly, a small query script, Studio 42's admin comp or other solutions

Also, if we use a product AJAX Filtering module, we would want to be able to filter all products by Car Manufacturer. Not sure if this would be an option, if we implemented it via Categories (as opposed to custom fields).

don't know the module -- have u looked at the filtering and search capabilities of the site I mentioned
these  (my modules) are also used on other sites like https://www.quality-tuning.eu/gb/