questions ?

Here is what I get ...

Normally, the system should have created all the variants automatically based on the characteristics. It seems it didn't work for that product. In that case, you can create the variants manually with the new button. You just have the set both characteristics value and a product name for the variants you need.

Normally, the system should have created all the variants automatically based on the characteristics. It seems it didn't work for that product. In that case, you can create the variants manually with the new button. You just have the set both characteristics value and a product name for the variants you need.

I'm coming back on what I said a few days ago :
- What I want to achive (I'll get there ) : I've got menus for a restaurant ... and as an example, I've got a few main meals ... but different menus with fixed prices ... all the menus won't have all the options for the mainmeal : I thought with what you told me previously that I would be able to choose which options would be displayed for each menu ...
I don't see how I can achieve this .. because when I click on 'new' from the "variants" screen I get the variants I chose showing me all the differents values in a dropdown no way to choose from them .... ?

So is it actually possible ? else it would be great as I said previously to have a display name for variants and being able to show only this one ...

Yes, it's possible.
You need to create one variant per combination of characteristics value.

For example, suppose that you sell tshirts with different colors, motifs and sizes.
You would create two characteristics: color and size. With all the possible values.

Then you create one product per motif with the image and add the 2 characteristics to each of them. That should automatically create one variant per combination of values. S and blue, S and red, S and brown, L and blue, L and red, L and brown. You can always create the variants manually and select the characteristics value for each) or delete variants you don't need for a product, etc.
Then, on each product page, you will have a dropdown for the user to select the color and size. That will about the price and the other information corresponding to the variant of the values selected.

That's what I was trying to do :

I created characteristics,and wanted to manage the variants so I clicked on it : that was the url index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=product and I get an error 500 .. so as you told me before .. the system should be working creating different variants ... and that's probably my error 500 ... that takes too much time to create all the different variants...
So what's this error 500 .. any clue ?

An error 500 doesn't tell us from where came the problem.
Could you give us an FTP access + a backup access to your website so that we can try to trace down the problem and possibly fix it ?
You can also live with the problem and manually create the variants for each combination of values for your products.

I send you an email straight away .... as I said I'll keep on using hikashop and really want to fully understand the all thing ...

I got your email.
Debugging such errors takes some time so we will get bakc to you tomorrow.

Thanks a million ...I'll wait for your email

Hi,

The problem comes from the fact that your product has 3 characteristics with roughly 20 values each. That means a total of 20*20*20 variants to be created automatically when you save your product. We need to optimize that process. currently it has to do more than 8000 queries for that and it takes too much time for the restrictions on your website. we are confident that we can reduce that number to less than 100 queries which shouldn't be a problem for your server... We'll work on that and test the solution on your website.

Thanks for that ... I'll have to find a way for now .. I'll give other names to characteristics ...
Don't worry about testing it on this website, just let us know for the improvements ... I was just worried I did something wrong ....

Thanks again !

Mmm. We improved that process and now I was able to create a product test2 on your website with more than 400 variants (2 characteristics). However, with 3 characteristics it resulted in the same problem. Your hosting companie's restrictions on processing time is just too low for hikashop to process so much data.
More importantly, the problem is the display of the product page and the variants listing... On the product page, the system has to load all the variants data in memory and with so much data, that is just not possible.

It would indeed be better to use a different approach to what you want to do.

Understood ... thanks for the work ...
The hosting company is 1&1 so I guess loads of people will have this problem some day ...
I think it would be a great idea as i said previously to have a display name for characteristics ... that will solve loads of problems.

Well, for the fact that you have an error when saving 8000 variants information in one page, the problem is the hosting company... We can't do much more than what we did. There are two options: use another hosting company (or upgrade to a less restrictive plan), or change the way you want to display your products so that you don't have 8000 variants for a product. For example, you could use the entries form feature ( www.hikashop.com/fr/support/documentatio...ikashop-entries.html ) where you could ask the user questions about his event like the date, the menu type he would like and the type of meals, etc and then link the fields to products so that they would be automatically added to the cart and the user directed to the checkout once the user validates his entry.
This way, you won't need any variants.

I understand what you're saying don't worry .. but in some case variants are the way to do ... I understand that 8000 variants are a lot that's why I was thinking about creating different characteristic names but the same display name ... that was a way around the problem.
Don't understand me wrong ... your characteristics system is really good, and well thought ... but it might be over complicated and take lots of ressources when it can be achieved another way that's all ... I was just giving an opinion .... you're still building this component and I thought it would be interesting for yoy to get feedbacks from real projetcs ...
thanks for the help

(I didn't want to create so many variants in the same characteristics at the beginning... you told me it was the best way to do .)

Yes, it is a good way to do it. But I didn't expect you had so many possibilities. Most of the times, characteristics are used for sizes or colors. There would be less than 100 variants, which is fairly easy to handle for any server. I was expecting a bit more for your case like for example 8*8*8 which should work on your server without issue.

Anyway, I hope you manage to do it differently.

Yep ... but think a bout the display name ... could solve loads of people problems and loads of headaches as well (for you guys)
Anyway thanks for ansering on such a short time !

The problem is not he size of the text of the values. It doesn't change anything for HikaShop. Whether the text is short or long, the result would have been the same. The problem is the number of values and the fact that the system needs to create one variant per combination of values.

You don't understand what I mean !
so i'll explain a bit more : (I joined a picture to explain this a bit more)

Even if I'm not a coder : I've got a good understanding on how it's working :

with a display name and a database name .. the problem would be solved ... and for people wanted to use the older system that's no problem ... database name and displayed name could be the same ..

This way the system wouldn't have to process so much datas at the same time because there would have less variants in the characteristics ... (it's just an idea)

Why would there be less variants with another name ? I'm not following you.