Simple versus Configurable products

Question

I am totally new to Magento (having previously used Zencart for all my stores), but I like to look of it and am after a more professional cart for my next project. Magento looks good.

I will be selling "personalised stationery items" which have options associated with them such as

• choose from 30 colours
• choose from 10 patterns
• choose from 10 "designs"

(So 30*10*10=3000 combinations). I want the image shown in the product page to change based on the user's selection of colours, patterns and designs. The price would be the same no matter which options they select. Although I may have one or two other "attributes" that would influence the price....Does anyone have any first hand experience of an extension that would do the colour pallete thing for me (I would need the visual pallet itself to hold image files of my choice so it can work for colours and patterns etc).

I'm starting to get my head around products types, specifically simple and configurable. How would you experts implement this? Can I do this as a simple product with attributes or so I need to use a configurable product in some way? Configurable products seem complicated compared to the simple products so what is the advantage? What can be done with a configurable product that I can't do with a simple product?

Any pointers you can give me would be much appreciated!

Thanks Gary

Answer 1

For the configurable/ simple product, it is not that complicated. I would see configurable as the "parent" of simple product (so these simple products becomes the associated product of the configurable product), you should try test or it and will find it quite easy.

In your case, you should create a configurable product with the 3 attributes: colors, patterns and designs, then associate the 3000 simple products to it. And you need the "configurable swatch function" to allow the image swap with customer selections.