add product type or just add a field to existing

[Minnie Mouse]

hi, i am trying to figure out whether or not i need to add a new product type or if just adding a new field to the table products_description is okay. i have a few extra fields i would like to display for my products... ingredients, fragrance, etc. i tried adding an extra field into the general products 'products_description' table and that worked. it displays properly (well except in the preview but i think i know how to fix that).


am i going to have trouble in the future if i try to upgrade my zencart if i just alter these general files as opposed to making a whole new product type??

thanks!
Liz

[kobra]

Have you looked at the mod tabed-lite in the templates download section??

This would allow creating a tab(s) for additional items per product. Like for ingredients, etc.

This can be done in the products description area when creating a product and no DB changes required. Just an option

[Minnie Mouse]

thanks! if you only had caught me a few minutes earlier!
i figured out using a combination of threads and the book product type download how to add a new product type and then i just added fields to the product description table and accessed those. its a little easier than creating whole new tables in the database. so it works.. so far.
thanks, Liz

[jrf]

Hi -
I've been reading and still unsure if I should use the Product Type option -
I need to set up a cart for products (chemical substances) which have many additional fields for descriptions which are not necessarily attributes - the customer just needs to see these descriptions, not make choices from them that will affect the price. I don't think filtering or searching by them is important.

It's all in an excel spreadsheet at the moment (am hoping to use EZpopulate). I could see having the extra information available via the cart in a link that would link externally to a page that displays all this extra info from another database, but that would be a hardship in that we want all the data in one database, namely the zencart product database.
Does this sound like an application for Product Type - does it essentially add new descriptive fields for the product - or is there another way to do this?
Thank you

[reza]

hi could you please send here what you did and the changes, or even you can make a contribution if you like.
I was looking for a solution to do it but I am not so experienced to do it. I need to add extra fields for a product that later the customer can also serch on basis of these fields betwen products.
thanks

I am lso interested for something like this, but with the functionality to have the possibility to filter the products according to these fields, and even hving them in advanced search.

zen has search for from price to to price, but the tmplate of zen is not like a product comprison engine site, so actually it is no so attractive.

[gjh42]

jrf -
What you describe could probably be done well by just making a <ul> list in the description. It should be possible to set up a stock description template which the spreadsheet could insert text into. (I haven't used Excel so don't know how you would do it.) If the template has CSS classes built into it, those can be styled in your stylesheet so the styling doesn't have to be repeated in every product.

[jrf]

Thank you so much for this and yes, when I figure it out I will post the answer.
The idea of just making a UL list in the description and a way for the user to add it is a great idea -
will post the answer and I thank you for your creative thinking-
JRF