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4/19/2010 3:50 PM
 

 Hi All,

I'm very new to dotnetnuke so If I'm posting in the wrong area sorry!

I'm creating a website which will be very heavily concentrated on a product Library with .pdf product brochures. I want to make it as easy as possible for my customers to search my product database in the shortest amount of clicks as possible. I would appreciate any advice you can offer.

I was wondering if you guys/gals can point me in the right direction as to what would be the most suitable module/skin to use for my product library which I would like to be searchable by each of the below parameters for example allowing my customers fastest access to literature with minimum amount of clicks:

Device Function, Specific Device Technology, Device Name, Device Specification, Manufacturer

Hope I'm making some sense?

All advice welcome

 
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4/20/2010 1:18 AM
 

 Hi,

There are several options available. I'm not using the DNN core store module as it's too limited, but there are several alternatives out there and most of them offer the things you need:

- NBSTore (opensource, codeplex) has a 'search' module to use with the others

- Catalook .netStore has search functionality as well (via Snowcovered)

and there are really a lot of other products out there that could help you as well. You might even design your own module-like thing with OpenWebStudio, or use XMOD (PRO) or even an IndooGrid for your needs of putting up a searchable datagrid product view. I wouldn't use this approach myself, as there are so many out-of-the-box solutions available.

Rgrdz

</P>

 
New Post
4/20/2010 3:59 AM
 

Pieter is right with his suggestion about the other storemodules. For quite some time I've been using CATALook store as it allows you to use a spreadsheet to manage products, add multiple categories and images fairly consistently. 

There is a good search function available to - but it's a little bit to configure because it uses the fields that are available in the product entry - like isbn, author, free, which can be renamed to your own needs, but may not always act as expected.  The store module also has a search skinobject that can be used which allows you to extend the normal dnn search by embedding in store search within the address bar. I've not had as much luck configuring to the enth degree, but I do believe others have.

The store module would also let you link, in an elegant manner, demos, pdfs, images etc to present your product range, and currently on http://www.dnnskins.com I am using it in this manner but taking it one setp further to allow for users to add the layout design to the cart, then checking out, agreeing to our terms and conditions and then downloading the files, like a store but with no money unless of course you choose to purchase one of our commercial skins.

I wanted to give some more flexibilty to users when searching for skins, as even though we can put in some search features, I couldn't really display as well as I wanted that was unique to the user audience.

I started looking around at directories, free and commercial - but then thought I'd look at the http://www.ventrian.com property agent module. It's something we have used over and over again and just love the support given by this great developer, as well as the incredible flexibility of it.  While some people use the repository module, and that's something worth considering, I just love the Property Agent module.

Here is an example of the directory when you are not logged in - Actually it looks the same whether logged in or not - on the follow two images - there are examples of how you can configure different information to be visible to different roles.

 View or lising without being logged in.

 Product Layout - when not logged in - http://www.dnnskins.com

View of Listing when logged in as a registered user.

 Registered User view - http://www.dnnskins.com - using authentication roles with the Ventrian Property Agent

This will require more work to manage in the long run - but for our needs,a directory was the best solution - particularly with being able to offer a better search option to help people to narrow down information fairly quickly. At this stage it will be manually managed, whereas when working with the CATALook store, it's managed via spreadsheet. 

Because you can set the pdfs to be available for download at the preview level of the shopping cart function, it might work for you.

So, although I've shown what I'm moving to - you can visit http://www.dnnskins.com and see how the store functionality works.

Nina Meiers
http://www.xd.com.au


Nina Meiers My Little Website
If it's on DNN, I fix, build, deploy, support,skin, host, design, consult, implement, integrate and done since 2003.
Who am I? Just a city chic, having a crack at organic berry farming.. and creating awesome websites.
 
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5/27/2010 7:29 AM
 
Hi Nina Many thanks for taking the time to reply to my query. Ideally I'm looking to add products like: http://www.aquametro.com/english/wasser_111_e.html without pricing initially. The example is static, potentially I would like to put in data filters to aid my customers search to allow them identify their product in the fastest time possible. Do you have an example site where you have used the above two options IE actual site links? Many thanks again and sorry for taking so long to respond. Regards Michael
 
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