Grouped Product - Custom Page Layout

Question

I am looking to show a larger lifestyle product image at the top of a grouped product and show all the individual simple products belonging to that grouped product underneath.

Something similar to this link

http://goo.gl/XDzs9C

I need the larger image to almost full width of the page and would like to have a short description underneath the image and above the products as is shown in the sample link.

Answer 1

It is possible for you to create your own skin folder and override templates. If you just want to change images, you can just copy the original file to your skin and add some simple code, wrapped in an "if" so that this only happen on grouped product pages

in a rough sketch, something like

<?php if ($_product->isGrouped()): ?><?php endif; ?>

will only execute whats in between for grouped products, leaving other types unchanged.

If your changes are more extensive, it will be more manageabl to define in the layout.xml file a section for the grouped product type that makes the site use different templates or layout logic. That way you can keep the originals clean and it is also better for performance.

To give an example on my site I want to loop over the simple products and show attributes that belong to them, on the grouped product details page - I am changing two templates but also using the "translate" option to override the title

<PRODUCT_TYPE_grouped>
        <reference name="product.info">
            <block type="catalog/product_view_type_grouped" name="product.info.availability.snippet" as="product_type_availability_snippet" template="catalog/product/view/type/availability/snippet/grouped.phtml" />
            <block type="catalog/product_view_description" name="product.description" as="description" template="catalog/product/view/type/groupeddescription.phtml">
                    <action method="addToParentGroup"><group>detailed_info</group></action>
                    <action method="setTitle" translate="value"><value>Description</value></action>
           </block>
        </reference>       
</PRODUCT_TYPE_grouped>

This requires you to figure out reference names of the different areas of the pages etc. which will take longer, so if you only want to add an image banner you are probably OK just adding an "if"

I hope this helps start you thinking