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 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Satchmo users" group. To post to this group, send email to satchmo-us...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to satchmo-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/satchmo-users?hl=en.