Step By Step Products (Brainstorming)

Question

We have a client that has a very old HTML website that needs to be upgraded to Magento. This client sells Chimney Liner Kits, which is essentially 4 different products that work together. Here is the flow:

1. Select a Chimney Liner
2. Select a Bottom Connector
3. Select a Chimney Cap
4. Select A Flue Cap

How would we set that up in Magento? Would these be bundled products, kits, or related product? Conceptually I am not sure what to do. I am sure there is probably some extension that could make this work, but I'm not sure what to look for. Can somebody point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

A bundled product will give the user the option to select a type per step. Set the different product groups as bundle options

• Chimney liner
• Bottom connector
• Chimney cap
• Flue cap

Under each of these options you add the related products after which, on the frontend, the user can choose their configuration

Answer 2

I am about to start on a project that sounds like it has a similar flow to ordering product. In our case, the flow needs to be highly customized, and everything I've looked at regarding bundled/configurable/grouped products leaves gaps in our requirements. We essentially need a grouped product that has child dependencies where the children are configurable products.

I looked at adding a new custom product type (based on grouped product), but to go this route means rewriting a number of core models and blocks, something I'd rather not do. I could avoid it by building a completely custom product type, but that is going to be overkill since everything we need is already part of existing product types, it is only the block layers that need to be worked with.

Ultimately, what we have decided to do is to build custom product page blocks loosely based on how grouped products work. This way we can customize the flow (choose Product A's options, Product B's options get dynamically loaded based on previous choices) without having to worry about rebuilding all the default product page blocks.

Answer 3

As each item is a separate product in it's own right, your best option would be to use a configurable product. With configurable products you create one product as the the 'parent' (the configurable product) and then create simple products in addition to this parent product. You then associate the simple products with configurable product.

On the frontend you see a single product - the parent configurable product, and this product has selectable options. Each option you select relates to one of the simple products and on completing the purchase Magento will register a sale, and stock change, against the relevant simple products.

So say you have 2 different options for each product you would create 9 products in total:

1. Chimney Liner Kits (parent configurable product)
2. Chimney Liner 1 (simple product)
3. Chimney Liner 2 (simple product)
4. Bottom Connector 1 (simple product)
5. Bottom Connector 2 (simple product)
6. Chimney Cap 1 (simple product)
7. Chimney Cap 2 (simple product)
8. Flue Cap 1 (simple product)
9. Flue Cap 2 (simple product)

You associate each simple product with the configurable which would result in 4 selectable options for the product on the frontend - Chimney Liner, Bottom Connector, Chimney Cap and Flue Cap. Within each option you would have 2 choices for variation 1 and variation 2. Dependant on how you pick your options, sales would be registered against the relevant simple products.