Hello!

First id like to say thanks for the work done on this module, Im sure it'll be the best store module out there! Im posting this here to hopefully help with the future success of the module, and Id be happy to hear what you think about my suggestions.

We'r currently creating site for a comic book store, and Im trailing different store modules to decide which to use and how to implement (and extend) it. I have some specific demands when deciding which module to use, although nothing extraordinary from my point of view, it seems like all store modules iv seen doesnt quiet cut it. Specifically why a certain module doesnt I wont get into here, and leave for their specific module's discussions, but I would like to make some design suggestions which I think is important to create a more flexible Core store module.

Store menu and categories vs DNN menu system

All modules iv tested seems to have their own "category" system (as they call it), which basically is a catalog menu navigation of products. Generally there are 2 versions of these, the ones that does provide more than 1 level of categories and the ones that doesnt.

In my opinion, this functionality is a bit of reinventing the wheel. Practially speaking, what these store menus/category browsers are, is a new menu system. And that DotNetNuke already have, not to mention alot of 3rd party modules and skin objects out there which does the job better. Mind you, Im not saying the concept of categorizing products shouldnt be used, for product search facilities etc, just that it shouldnt be so tightly coupled with the product navigation UI.

I would suggest enabling the use of the DNN menu system to browse products without the need of the store category browsing UI. I havnt browsed the Core module's code enough yet to say if this would be hard or easy to implement, but I would think it not that time consuming.
Imagine being able to create a pre-defined search criteria (a Category, but I also would suggest other custom attributes, which Ill come to later) in the settings of a core Catalog module. Instead of the Catalog module needing input from the Categories module to display products, it simply always displays all products for the specified criteria. Creating a product page would go something like this:
1. Admin->Pages->Create the page, lets call it "Product Page 1"
2. Browse to the created page
3. Add the Catalog module (do *not* add the Categories module)
4. In settings for that module, select a category, or any other search criteria to display on that page.

One problem here though is that sometimes (and same goes for the comic book store we'r working on) you do not want the product browsing menu to be seperate from the menu for the rest of the site. Iv no idea whats in store in for the DNN menu systems here in the future, but this we solve by using 3rd party menus today. We often want 2 seperate menus on our site's. By using menu modules and/or skin objects like HouseMenu we can do that by setting our menus root to a page on level 2 in the DNN pages menu tree. For example we can show one manu at the top of the page, and one in the left pane. Maybe something similar is being done with the Solpart menu already...

There are alot of benefits by using the DNN menu system for product browsing. To name a few, and Im sure there are others I havnt thought of:
:: Any menu module or skin object could be used to design and template the product navigation. Be it SolPart, HouseMenu, or whatever module.
:: The existing navigation modules and skin objects would work seemlessly for product catalog browsing UI. For example, the BREADCRUMB skin object would display product category browsing info.
:: Customers/Users only have 1 site menu system to learn and modify.
:: We can display different modules on the page depending on what page you are on. For example, a product page could display a Text/Html module with an extended description about this page/product category, while other pages would not.

Custom product attributes

Iv read this is planned for the 1.1 release. Issue "STO-2455 - Add ability to define custom product attributes when adding a new product"

This is also something I need for the comic book store. Simply, for comic books the attribute "Manufacturor" isnt that interesting, but I sure need Author and Artist etc. So, now im wondering about how this will be implemented.

The discription of the issue suggests that the attributes is needed to be defined when products are created. This may not be (and probably isnt) the full description of the issue, and how its to be implemented, but I would suggest another design.

From my experience its very important that product creation and maintentance need to be easy. Hence streamlining functionality on produect creation/update page is vital in real life scenarios. Taking CATALooK as an example, where product creation is so complex it requires a programmer to do it. Its simply gotten too complex for a regular user to be able to use it.

I would suggest seperating creation of product attributes from product creation. Very much like profile property attributes creation is seperated from user profile creation in DNN. Product attribute creation belongs to store administration, while product creation belongs to day-to-day functionality. When designing product attribute functionality, please make it similar to the design of DNN profile properties.

To further extend it, although optional, I would suggest creating something like "product types" which have a collection of attributes associated with them. Then products would be assigned different attributes depending on what type of product is being created. Maybe something for the future though.



Thanks for reading, im very interested of your thoughts about my suggestions.

At the moment I might make those changes to the core module myself, but which store module we'll be using has not been decided yet. I would prefer to use the core because I belive in its future, but it all depends if I can manage to make it fit the customer's demands.

Regards,
Mathias