Is there merit in, and is it possible for CS Cart to possibly create an "Invisible" status for products?
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"Invisible"
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With Product Variations you can currently list a T-Shirt with multiple variations, eg. Blue (M) (L) (XL) etc. Product Variations concept works well however, when a user is viewing all products in a category they have to wade through all the hundreds variations in the store as individual products.
If a product could be set to "Invisible" status, the user would still be able to view all variations but each one though a single template product, unlike with "Hidden" status which prevents them from seeing the products unless they arrive through a specific url.
This is much like what the Product Variations when set as "Variations as one product" allows, however the "Variations as one product" does not allow you to use the Suppliers addon, which is where my need lies.
Of course, if they can create the Product Variations "Variations as one product" that works with the Suppliers addon, then "invisible" is not needed, although this might work in other situations I have not thought of.
I'm not too sure what impact this would have in filtering products, perhaps the filtering could overide the "invisible" status?
This leads on to the next aspect which would then be the ability to create a "Template Product", which would be the product that the user would see, but would not require the input of price/code/stock/ etc, and would hopefully allow for more discretion on the descriptions.
For example, a user would see
"Short Sleeve round neck T-shirt" (A single listing visible with many invisible variations)
- All of the Size variations would be available
- All of the colour variations would be available
- A generic product description
- Price From $28.00
- Availability: In stock
"Long Sleeve V-neck T-shirt" (A single listing visible with many invisible variations)
- All of the Size variations would be available
- All of the colour variations would be available
- A generic product description
- Price From $28.00
- Availability: In stock
In this way your many more of your products would be visible to the user on opening a category and make them more focussed in their shopping experience.
Everything else would work exactly as it does now.