products and product attributes

[tlommy]

Long time drupal user here, just attempting my first Magento site here and im a bit confused. Maybe someone with a bit more experience in Magento can point me in the right direction.

With Drupal I would simply create a custom product type for each type of product and within those product types would be the different types of attributes. First off I don't see any options for creating custom product types in Magento, im guessing that would be done via php code instead here?

Whats the proper way to set up a store here? I would think for organization each different product would have its own product type rather than using the "Simple Product" and just throwing 50 attributes onto it and sorting by folder.

[Pronto]

The feature you're looking for is attribute sets. You can create as many of those as you want (for TV sets, for shoes, for cell-phones) and whenever you can choose appropriate set.

[Store_Manager · Accepted solution]

Actually Magento offers 6 product types and also custom options. Here is tutorial with types explained and infographic to decide what product to use in what case -

https://www.mag-manager.com/useful-articles/how-to-create-different-types-of-products-in-magento/

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@tlommy wrote:

Whats the proper way to set up a store here?

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Generally, to start you have to get the understanding of what are Magento attribute sets and attributes.

Basically all the product-related info is presented as attributes. Product name, price, availability, short description, description and other product details - these are all attributes of different types.

Attributes themselves are gathered in attribute sets and separate attribute groups within them. This is good if you have very diverse goods sold in the same store.For example, products belonging to Computers attribute set will most likely have Hard-drive attribute, that will not be necessary for Cosmetics items.

Clothes attribute set might have, let’s say, Material attribute, whereas for Cell phones usually there is no need to include it.

So if you have goods with different parameters (features) the good idea is to group them and create separate attribute set for goods belonging to some group.

After attribute sets are created and attributes are assigned to them, you move to creating product and then the first thing you indicate is again attribute set  and product type. Depending on this selection you will further see different lines to fill in product details.

Here is also the video on attributes, so hope it helps -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU67q9m1iOE

[Pronto]

I think he thought that product types and attributes sets are the same thing. They are not.

[tlommy]

after a bit more reading I saw the option for attribute sets. Now I understand instead of creating custom content types you simple create custom attribute sets and apply those to the product to give each product different attributes without just loading up all the attributes on the default set. Thanks for information.