Setting up Configurable Products Correctly

[ridelowgc]

Hi

We have migrated from zen to magento and in so doing all products have been loaded as simple products when in fact, now that we understand a little more about the power of magento, we should really have loaded them as configurable products.

We need some help on two issues because we are struggling

1. We sell bikes, each bike can have a selection of colours and wheel sizes and each combo can have its own EAN. We need to load EAN per combo in order to complye with Google shopping. So, if a bike is available in 2 different colours and 3 frame sizes then there are potentially 6 combos, each with its own EAN. How do we set this up? I have setup three attributes for colour, wheelsize and EAN as dropdowns and have them in an attribute set. When I add new product and select my attribute set and select my three attributes I get into the product framework but is that right? Do I have to enter all possible EANs in the attribute properties before entering a product? Is there a different way?

2. If I wanted to convert existing simple products into configurable products, how can I do that?

Please advise

Rgds

[asrarau]

Hi,

@ridelowgc

I am just describing how simple and configurable products work in Magento. Certainly you can find many tutorials how to create them. But with good understanding it will be much simpler for you.

Magento uses attributes to define a product. When I say product, I mean, physical products in this case i.e. book, cloth. We can use attributes like author_name, version for books but for cloth we need to use size, colour.

In Magento, we create author_name and version attributes, make them available to create configurable product, assign other meta data to it. Please note, there are plenty tutorials how to create attributes in backend. 

Once attributes are created, assign them in an attribute set i.e. ‘product_book’. You can create attribute set form Catalog > Manage Attribute Sets. Attribute set is something where you can group different attributes but for a specific product in this case book.

Now when you create any simple product with the attribute set ‘product_book’ as opposed to ‘Default’, you will be having those two attributes author_name, version available with default attributes.

However, configurable product is created based on an attribute set i.e. 'product_book' and available attributes under the selected attribute set i.e. author_name, version. Now when you create a configurable product with author_name, version selected, these two attributes will be used as ‘Super attributes’ for this configurable product. And when you browse that configurable product on frontend, you will be given option to select from 'Author Name' and 'Version'. 

You can say, configurable products group similar simple products.