Need some assistance (automotivepart site)

[goldenprizm]

I am looking to build an automotive part site using virtuemart2

I have all the information needed. 
I have currently finished uploaded about 150,000 items to virtuemart2 (the easy part). Now my next step is to create categories for these products and setup a YMM lookup. 

My product feed looks something like this. 

Poduct_Sku       Year                  Make     Model      Trim      engine   etc.................................       
124567             2003-2005        Honda   Civic         base    3.5             
124567             2006-2007        Cadilac   Deville     base    4.0

The problem:
1.  i am not sure what the best way to go about and categorize my products when my excel feed shows the year as (2003-2005)...  see example above
2. One product sku may fit multiple cars.

Can anyone assist me or lead me in the right direction on what the best solution in solving these issue.

[PolishedGeek]

You won't want to use categories for all of those compatibility fields. You will want to set up product custom fields to configure which makes/models etc. are compatible with each SKU. Then to help you customer's find the right parts for their autos, you can use a power filter search extension like this one: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension-specific/virtuemart-extensions/virtuemart-products-search/22062

Hope this helps!

[goldenprizm]

It seems very straight forward. 

For some reason when I try and create a custom field type (string) and save all seems fine.  I then go to product and add the Custom Field Type and saved it.
I then go to my product details page which displays a blank page .  When I delete the custom field everything is good again.  Any ideas on what would cause that.  If you have insight it would be appreciate it....

[PolishedGeek]

What version of VM2 are you using? Older versions than 2.0.18a have bugs naturally, so if you are on an older one you should upgrade to see if the problem still occurs.  Outside of that I'd wonder if it's a template or CSS problem, or a special character in the custom field?

[goldenprizm]

PolishedGeek

I sent you a pm..  Let me know if you got it

Thank you

[PolishedGeek]

Response sent to PM - thanks!