Parent and child products

[Bruce Morgan]

One of the positive things about the migration to 2.0 on my test site is that all of the parent child relationships were preserved.  However, i have no idea how these can be used to advantage on VM 2.0.  On the old prgram I could go to display options and I could slect how I wanted the product to be displayed.  For example i sell my bags of salt and peppers in 2 or 3 different bag sizes.  In moving to the parent/child configuration I was able to rreducre the number of products displayed in the category view with a single pictures displaying the different sizes.  In the product details page I was able to display all of the sizes as a list with each size having its own add-to-cart button.  Almost perfect and easy to see up.

In VM 2.0 the child products are invisible in the shop and I have no idea how to change that.  My whole reason in implementing parent/child a year ago was to show all of the sizes selectable on a single product details page.  How can i do this now?

Might it be better to junk the parent/child system and go back to having custom fields to replicate the old product attributes scheme?  One of the downsides of my adoption of parent child in early 2011 was that the product information on my sales was no longer compiled by Google Analytics.  On the product sales detail any of the products without children that were sold would be compiled, even if they had attributes assigned to them.  Not so for the prducts I switched to parents or children.  After the change they became invisible to Google Analytics.  I never would have bothered if I had known that would happen.

Is anybody using paretnchild prduct on VM 2.0 and if so could you share your code for the product details page so i could give it a try?

Bruce

[Milbo]

The vm2 system covers both for you.

When you want to have the childs working as variants of the parent, use the product custom field "Generic Child Variant", use layout position "ontop", add it to your parent, done.

When you want to use the parent as kind of pattern for your childs, unpublish the parent and give your child a category and then it appears at the frontend.

Important: the childs of vm2 are real childs, inheriting almost anyhting of the parent. That means for a variant, you can just create a child,.. leave everything as it is,.. change the name and the price, done.

and you childs are completly normal products, should be normally used by google analytics.

[Bruce Morgan]

Thank you for responding to both queries about these two related topics.  I am not sure exactly what you are saying.  If you take a look at my live web site
http://www.pepper-passion.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=93&category_id=6&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=200024 you can see an example i have set up with a product that has three children, all three of which are visible with the add-to-cart icon for the three variants on the prduct details page.  The parent is visible under the category "sea-salts".  The work perfectly (with the exception that the products sold are not recorded on Google Analytics).  I would love to know how to duplicate this in VM2.0.  My preference would be to not make the parent a top tier category but perhaps I could make each parent an intermediate category?  The idea is that I want the categoty "sea-salts" to show each of the parent products but the prduct details page would show each of the child varaint on one page.  How could I do this?

The other strategy I have used is the old-style attributes such as you can see here http://www.pepper-passion.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=67&category_id=4&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=200024.  I have two attributes defined.  I have struggled with the new custom fields to try and replicate even one of the dropdowns lists.  I have reviewed every thread on this subject and the answer has eluded.  How would you duplicate this?  If you could give step by step instruction I think it would be hugely useful for many of us.

Just to make this even more complicated i also have a few products where there were two or more children PLUS selectable attributes for each child.

looking forward I want to decide how I am going to present my prudcts in VM2.0.  If there are two ways to do the same thing then I need to select which one or the other.  Is VM2.0 sufficiently developed that you could offer a suggestion at this stage? 

Many Thanks,
Bruce

[thekalle]

I find using variants with the generic child variant works perfectly except for one detail:

I have a parent called "Shoe", and children called "Size 41", "Size 42", "Size 43" etc .
The parent uses a custom field being a generic child variant and a nice dropdown list is loaded at the display page.
In this list it first lists the parent item followed by the children when I only want the children (sizes) in the list. Now the list looks like:
Shoe
Size 41
Size 42
Size 43

Is there a way to make it so that the custom field does not include the parent?

[thekalle]

Actually the way I solved it is completely off from how I wanted it to be.

Of course I want all the products to have the name Shoe but I need the dropdown-list to show the value for size. How would one accomplish this?

[mmteus]

Is there a way to make it so that the custom field does not include the parent?

Hi, I have the same problem, can you tell me how you solved it?
Thanks in advance

Matteo

[DFerris]

I am using J2.5.3 and VM 2.0.2.  I would like to put a choice of colors to certain products.  In VM1.5, i knew how to do it
( http://www.concealedweaponproducts.com/cms/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=3)..
Now in VM2, I cant find instructions and this is where I end up
(http://www.concealedweaponproducts.com/joomla25/virtuemart/taser-products/taser-c2-platinum-package-detail).
I have searched the forums and read the manual.  Can anyone get me to instructions or provide me with this instruction.

The only thing I can say at this time is AAARRGGGGHHHHHH!

[Bruce Morgan]

Welcome to the crowd!  I see other threads where users are hacking the file in various ways to try and achieve what they need and the results are never satisfactory.  Your live site uses the easy to use attributes which would be satisfactory for me but it is difficult or impossible to duplicate with the new VM.  I am also waiting for a set of clear instructions on how to do this.

Bruce

[ehoward]

The vm2 system covers both for you.

When you want to have the childs working as variants of the parent, use the product custom field "Generic Child Variant", use layout position "ontop", add it to your parent, done.

When you want to use the parent as kind of pattern for your childs, unpublish the parent and give your child a category and then it appears at the frontend.

Important: the childs of vm2 are real childs, inheriting almost anyhting of the parent. That means for a variant, you can just create a child,.. leave everything as it is,.. change the name and the price, done.

and you childs are completly normal products, should be normally used by google analytics.

Please tell each of the steps to "use the product custom field "Generic Child Variant", use layout position "ontop", add it to your parent, done."

[Menace]

Hey everyone. I'm using an older thread as this:

... http://www.pepper-passion.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=93&category_id=6&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=200024 ...

Many Thanks,
Bruce

is exactly what I want to have on my site as well.

A list of all childs at the bottom of parent product details page.
Is that now possible in this or similar way with the current 2.0.8e Version?