How can this be achieved?

[mandingueiro]

Hello,

I want to create a niche catalog which will contain all the shops from a specific country.

The shops which I'll add can have 4 kinds of products and can be located in all over the country. So what I want to do is have some links in my site in this form:

Select the location: location1 | location3 | location4
(when the user selects a location, all the shops in this location will be listed and then he can proceed -if he wants- to the next step)

Select the product type: product-type1 | product-type2 | product-type3 | product-type4
(now, from the listing created in the previous step, only the shops that contain the chosen product-type will be displayed)

What is the best way to achieve this? Maybe I can have all the locations added as categories and the product types added ass meta tags in each item, so with some modification the script will first retrieve all the items from a specific category (location) and then from these items, only those who have a the specific meta-tag (eg. product-type1).

An example of what I want can be found here (it's in Greek) but you'll get the point.

translation for the link above:
Κατασκευαστής=Manufacturer
Χωρητικότητα=Capacity

Thanks in advance

[Bruceper]

location is the main category, product type is the subcategory

So looking at it you would see

location1
-product-type1
-product-type2
-product-type3
-product-type4
location2
-product-type1
-product-type2
-product-type3
-product-type4
etc...

And that should do it, pretty simple actually.

[mandingueiro]

This is what I thought in the beggining but there's an issue: A user may not be interested in selecting a certain location, he may want to see all the shops in the country that contain the product-type1

[Bruceper]

You can't have it both ways if you want the index done automatically. If you want to do it manually then you could show two menu's

Menu 1
location1
-product-type1
-product-type2
-product-type3
-product-type4
location2
-product-type1
-product-type2
-product-type3
-product-type4
etc...

Menu2
product-type1
-location1
-location2
-location3
-location4
product-type2
-location1
-location2
-location3
-location4
etc...

[mandingueiro]

Well I don't want to do it like this. Maybe I can have it with some code modification from the nicecoder services? I believe this can be achieved as I said with the locations as categories and the product types as tags. When a user clicks on a location the script will retrieve all the items of the category (the location) and when he chooses the product type the script will retrieve all the items of this category (location) that contain a certain tag (the product type).

I believe this is not so hard to do with some code modification.

[Bruceper]

IndexU can't do it both ways automatically. To get custom work done it would basically require a rewrite of the script.

Your other alternative is to start with two main categories.
Location
Product Type

Then in each category place the appropriate items in them.

Each listing can have tags, but if you have 400 items with 5 tags each that's 2000 tags to sort through. Even if those tags were the same in many cases you're still looking at possibly hundreds of tags.

Also remember, that the index doesn't HAVE to have the categories listed. You can just list tags and a search box if you would like.

Or you could have a clickable map to take users to the location category and a list of product type categories underneath the map.

There's probably a dozen ways to do it, you just need some knowledge and imagination to make it happen.

[mandingueiro]

Can an item belong in two categories at the same time? If yes, then I can start with these two main categories you suggested (Location & Product type) and then with some code modification achieve what I stated in the first post.

The question is: What's the most practical way to do this: using two categories as main or something else?

I hope you understand what I mean

[mandingueiro]

Please ignore the post above.

Can an item belong in two categories at the same time?
If yes, then I can start with these two main categories you suggested (Location & Product type) and then with some code modification achieve what I stated in the first post.

I mean I want the user to be able to:
*find all the shops in the country that sells all the product-types
*find all the shops in the country that sells the product-type1
*find all the shops in Location1 that sells all the product-types
*find all the shops in Location1 that sells product-type1
These are the keys to what I want to achieve and I know how it will be designed (with simple links as I stated in the first post and by excluding results). I hope you understand what I mean

The question is: What's the most practical way to do this: using two main categories as you suggested or something else? I suppose the programmers of the team will know how to do this right?

Thanks in advance!

[Bruceper]

Yes an item can be in two categories at once. It can be in three if you would like.

I think the easiest and most cost effective way to do what you want it the two main categories with the products cross posted to each.

You can send email to custom [at] nicecoder.com but since it's the weekend you won't receive a response until sunday evening.

[mandingueiro]

Hello again.

I will propably contact the custom code team. What you mean cross posted to each by the way?

[Bruceper]

crossposted = added to more than one category

[mandingueiro]

Well it's been almost a week since I mailed the custom-work team but didn't receive any answers. Why so? (ticked id=4A551248)

[Bruceper]

No idea, I'll yell at someone to answer it soon.

[mandingueiro]

Hello again. Did you? No answer yet...

[dody]

We have a solution for you. Please check your email / ticket #4A551248.