Manage discontinued products

[Marttyn]

Thanks jenkinhill for your reply, although its not very useful 
Im aware that the discontinued product feature was added... my question was about how to use it, as its not showing any difference when products are marked as discontinued.
Maybe the template should check if the product is discontinued and change the output (dont show price, remove add to cart button, etc)? Or its virtuemart the one that should change the output, show a badge, or something else?
Regards

[aftertaf]

i was wondering also what the intention and front-end/back-end functionality was on this feature. It could potentially be very useful

[lindapowers]

I have been testing it and the only thing I noticed is that marking a product as discontinued can be shown in the top parent category view or the category itself just as "featured products" but in a different level.

I share the same doubts as you and I wonder what is the difference between a product out of stock with no category assigned and a discontinued product.

Logic tells me an out of stock could be something temporal and dicontinued won't be active never again.

I will think of discontinued products taking Amazon as an example when they mark a product as "Not available".
In VM to achieve this you can simply set a product out of stock and not assing any category to it.
The product will still remain there for browsers but customers won't see it.


Now... marking it as "discontinued" could be shown in the tab "discountinued" but what is the benefit of it or the difference between the "out of stock" & "remove category" method.

Maybe the term is something we don't understand either cause why can I set a product as "discontinued" while having stock and being able to buy it. Maybe it means that it won't be build more??

We probably don't understand the logic behind it cause discontinued as I see it now is not needed since VM can achieve the same effect with the method described but please enlighten us on the use of it.

Anyway interesting doubts that we have too.


Regards

[Marttyn]

For me discontinued products is very useful. Your method is not valid for me, as i dont keep stock, so giving 0 stock is not enough, clients could order it anyway. Also i would like to be visible in the same category.
Discontinued product is also a way of showing that the product is not available anymore, and in my case, a new version will be available in replacement. But clients can see both.

I think its "easy" to implement in the template. Just check if product is discontinued, and in this case change the output accordingly.
Just a confirmation would be fine, and i would do the changes myself to my template. But i dont want to do the work in the wrong way, because maybe this feature is implemented differently, or automaticaly handled by VM. Just need to know.

[K&K media production]

I think its "easy" to implement in the template. Just check if product is discontinued, and in this case change the output accordingly.
Just a confirmation would be fine, and i would do the changes myself to my template.

Yes you can do this. It is the same workflow like "featured". You can give them a badge in your template or show a extra section.

Furthermore you can activate "Stockhandle on product level". In this case you have a stockhandle option for each product inside the status tab. So you can deactivate the add to cart button for your discontinued products if they are out of stock.

[restodo]

It's almost 8 month since my first post and at the moment Virtuemart didn't implemented in a correct way the discontinued products.
It's an advanced to hace a check box in product administration but with only implementation like Feature page or Last products it isn't enough.

In my case I modify several files of my template (layout files) to implement discontinued in category, product details, feature, last products, and every place a discontinued product could be seen so the product hide buy button.

The only problem I've found is when I tried to implement discontinued in category to hide discontinued products from listings, for example 12 products per page, the discontinued product was hidden but an empty space left. The files I modified was products.php and products_horizon.php in sublayouts directory of my com_virtuemart of my template.

[K&K media production]

What you want must be done with stock....disable products with stock lower 1.

[Studio 42]

What you want must be done with stock....disable products with stock lower 1.

Stock have nothing todo with discontinued products.
I have some shops that need that product with 0 stock are displayed and discontinued too.
In some case :
>discontinued = no cart
>not in stock = Longer delivery time
But you can have other cases.
I have see in other shops to stay in the google search results, they add discontinued in the end of the list.
So you should have the option to hide it, remove the "add to cart",  add it at end of list in the category or add a badge ....

[restodo]

What you want must be done with stock....disable products with stock lower 1.

Stock have nothing todo with discontinued products.
I have some shops that need that product with 0 stock are displayed and discontinued too.
In some case :
>discontinued = no cart
>not in stock = Longer delivery time
But you can have other cases.
I have see in other shops to stay in the google search results, they add discontinued in the end of the list.
So you should have the option to hide it, remove the "add to cart",  add it at end of list in the category or add a badge ....

Exactly!

Nobody in the Virtuemart developer team knows about SEO?
It's very important to keep discontinued products (It doesn't mean products out of stock, It means products out of production o replaced by a new model) to keep the position in search engines.

[restodo]

What you want must be done with stock....disable products with stock lower 1.

And I think if I use "disable products with stock lower than 1" still be listed in category

[K&K media production]

no

[restodo]

no

Thanks for your answer. I tested Do not Display Product when is products are out of stock and you're right, category product listing only shows products with stock.

I think I can use a similar function to do the same with new discontinued option.

Do you know what are the files involved in Do not Display Product when is products are out of stock?


Regards!

[K&K media production]

administrator/components/com_virtuemart/models/product.php

but I don't understnd it ... why do you want the discontinued product checkbox to hide the product? ... you can simple disable/unpublish the product

[restodo]

administrator/components/com_virtuemart/models/product.php

but I don't understnd it ... why do you want the discontinued product checkbox to hide the product? ... you can simple disable/unpublish the product

If you want to keep a good position in search engines you can't disable or unpublished a product because doing that, the URL will disappear and when someone search on internet will return an error.
The correct way to manage a store is to mark as discontinued the products that are not produced anymore by its brands.

Are you sure that in administrator/components/com_virtuemart/models/product.php I will find the code used when Do not Display Product is checked?
I though it was in components/com_virtuemart/sublayouts/customfield.php

[K&K media production]

You wrote that you want to hide the products, not I.

I've added the discontinued products function to the core to mark the products as discontinued.

Yes I'm sure, I wrote the last core changes for discontinued products and stockhandle on product level.