Looking out for a best practice to build a site with a product catalogue which should look similar to that:

We've got about 80 products (with an own name) each product has several (lets say 6) variants.

Each product has characteristics like several images and text blocks and pdfs attached and so on which probably would be done using CCK and a view to display the cck node - so far so good. Now when dealing with the lets say 400-500 product pages (including the variants) which can be structured in an hierarchical order Taxonomy pops up right away. However even though (maybe because) we have build a couple of drupal sites already we know that there are potential pitfalls which we want to avoid where it comes to displaying these product category pages which don't only display a list of nodes/products but also some additional text, a picture to each product and a menu created from taxonomy terms.

Here is the desired structure again:

    * Product Pages
          o Product group 1 ( Category name )
                + Product 1 ( Name )
                      # Product variant 1 ( Name - Number x1 )
                      # Product variant 2 ( Name - Number x2 )
                      # Product variant 3 ( Name - Number x3 )
                      # Product variant 4 ( Name - Number x4 )
                      # Product variant 5 ( Name - Number x5 )
                      # Product variant 6 ( Name - Number x6 )
                + Product 2 
                + Product 3
                + Product 4
                + Product 5
                + Product 6
                + Product 7
                + Product 8
                + Product 9
                + Product 10
                + Product 11
                + Product 12
                + Product 13
          o Product group 2
          o Product group 3
          o Product group 4
          o Product group 5
          o Product group 6
          o Product group 7
          o Product group 8
          o Product group 9

Here is the solution that I have thought of:
Product Pages - Normal Static page
Productgroupe 1-9 - a view
Product 1-80 - a view

To each view I'd ad the menu of the taxonomies in which Taxonomy level the view "is" using menutrails ( http://drupal.org/project/menutrails ) so on a product page I'd have a menu of all variations of the product which have the product name as taxonomy. Same thing with a "product group" view were the view would display all products in the group plus a menu of all product groups. Totally I would end up it about 100 views.

Hmm hope I used the right terms to describe what I am looking for and that my English is good enough to make myself understandable.
Is there a better solution than what I though of? Maybe something that would generate a view based on the taxonomy term in the url so I wouldn't have to create 100 views (and changed them one for one as soon as the customer wants to ad a little detail on what is displayed)

Thanks,
Sebastian

Comments

s.Daniel’s picture

Just in case - If I left anything important out or if I didn't make myself understandable - please let me know.

Sebastian

s.Daniel’s picture

Wrong forum? should I ask somewhere else - or something else - or is this question answered somewhere else - or is it too complicated - or too easy? Please some feedback! :p

edit: Maybe someone wants to move the topic to 'Post installation'

Sebastian

ivrh’s picture

First, due to typos, some of your ideas are hard to understand.
Second, you speak wrong language and you're not clear enough.
If you looking for catrgorisation of your catalogue, loogk at 'node relativity' module. There is also nodefamily module, but I am using node relativity. It works with views module as well. Assign Product categories and Product relationship and you'll be able to add a new product to a category. Then, view will do the rest.

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