I haven't looked into whether downloads can be used with it, but have
you looked into custom products?  I had the same problem with
explosions of complexity using ConfigurableProduct and
ProductVariation objects with items with >5 or so options.

On Nov 24, 12:02 pm, Dave <mahal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm hoping some of you who have a lot of experience with Satchmo will
> have some advice for me. I've been working with Satchmo for a few
> years now, have a few stores running off it, and now am trying to
> rebuild one of those stores to greatly improve how it works and its
> manageability for administrators.
>
> Here's the store in a nutshell: downloadable media (entirely), where
> each product has two variations (SD & HD) where one variation (HD)
> increases the base cost of the product. Each variation has one or more
> files attached to it (different video formats usually), which the
> customer will have access to download upon completing his/her
> purchase.
>
> That's pretty much it. And after a year of wrestling with Satchmo, I
> feel I'm no closer to a solution. I'm running trunk (Django +
> Satchmo), by the way. Just to set the tone here, I love a lot about
> Satchmo, have a huge appreciation for the hard work by Bruce, Chris,
> and others, and understand it can't do everything for everyone.
>
> That said, here are what I think are my core frustrations:
>
> 1. Downloadable products seem to be a second-class citizen in Satchmo,
> which seems weird to me given the age we're in. There's the field
> 'Number in Stock' which in my experience has to be set to some high
> number (so it doesn't reach 0 after a few purchases) to make sure
> downloadable products can actually be sold.
>
> 2. Product variations are quite complex and slow everything down.
> Having to triple my product inventory by creating 3x of each product
> (base product, plus two generated products for the variations) is
> nuts. It's going to slow down every operation and it confuses my
> clients. Additionally, the variation manager and 'add variation' views
> (as noted in another discussion awhile ago) operate inconsistently and
> at times don't work at all (I believe javascript is required oddly
> enough) and don't supply any error messages.
>
> Every active product shows up on the site, meaning every one of those
> product variations shows up. So I have to add my own listeners to
> strip out variations from queries. This piles on complexity and
> increases server & db processing time.
>
> 3. I think the idea behind Satchmo is for it be flexible, but my
> experience has been that it has a fairly rigid use-case in mind and
> straying away from that just doesn't work well. (I suppose this is the
> core underlying issue).
>
> 4. I've tried to reverse engineer the shopping cart to figure out how
> to add my own product variation that works without having to have
> unique Product instances for everything, but it's been fruitless so
> far. I fear my head may explode. Bottom line: I feel forced into using
> the ConfigurableProduct approach even though it's not what I want at
> all. I'm not selling t-shirts or computers. And I can't use the
> downloadable product module because it doesn't fit with the types of
> products my clients are offering (no variations).
>
> What would you do if this were your project? How would you configure
> Satchmo or design a custom product module? I'm sure (or at least very
> hopeful) that I'm doing it the "wrong" way and I've missed some
> important details.
>
> Is there an advanced guide to the cart and how to design a custom
> product module with one variation for every product so it works with
> the cart?
>
> Many, many thanks in advance for your comments & suggestions!
>
> Dave

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