Global Options Versus Local Options: Which One To Keep?

Multi-Vendor Questions
1

Hello,

We are in the process updating our store. We first had wanted to do an export/import move, but that didn't work out so well as it resulted in a lot of corrupted files.

So we try it by updating slowly. But once again, we run into problems.

As I'm not very technical I'll stick to two problems that we are confronted with most of all.

a. ghost (local) options

Ghost options are options that were once (locally) created for specific products, but were removed after they weren't needed anymore. This was mostly done for products that were close to expiration date for which we created a discount , but for which we also had new stock that were sold at the regular price.

Once the old stock was depleted, the option was removed.
It seems those products give rise to problems when updating. How do we solve this?

ETA: we kinda 'solved' it by removing those specific products (just 10) which will be put back individually later on.

b. individual local option versus global store-wide options

We've been with CS-Cart since late 2015, and are now at 4.10.4 but need to update to 4.11.1

Sometime in the past few years a change arrived that allowed for GLOBAL options, which I found quite confusing, but mostly ignored, since I preferred creating options for each individual product.

dabbled a bit with them but left them alone after a while as I found them very confusing. But.. did start writing out not just 'flavours' but 'flavours product X'

What's the use of global product option when you don't really use them store-wide.. can you simply ignore it just like we used to do?

c. change from option to variation

In the new update that we are just testing , a product with say 10 flavours (option) suddenly gets 10 different products cluttering the layout.

On one hand it is nice to see the exact quantity immediately for a specific flavour, but things look rather unwieldy and I feel lost with a lack of a 'master' product page.

At least one question got answered : options were moved automatically to the 'variation' . A difference is that the prices are now absolute instead of relative, right?

2

Every store is different but for us the change to global options is very useful.

If you have many products and you want to change the price of an option for all products a global option saves time.

Currently I am in the process of changing from individual options to global options and will never go back to individual options

3

Every store is different but for us the change to global options is very useful.

If you have many products and you want to change the price of an option for all products a global option saves time.

Currently I am in the process of changing from individual options to global options and will never go back to individual options

Of course this can be useful when you have many products with similar options.
The main thing I was wondering about right now was whether the global options interfere with individual ones, especially when the individual ones all (used to) have the exact same name.
In our case it was mostly flavour for permanent ones and sale/standard price for temporary options/variations.
A 3rd case is what we did to lead customers, creatures of habit, from one brand to another brand by offering them the other brand as an option and not allow them to buy the original product (last resort since it is harder to keep track of stock this way).


Edit: only noticing now I placed it in the multi-vendor section, we just have a single vendor shop. I see how global options would be useful for very large webshops!