Breaking the Ecommerce Mold II

In the previous post, we explained what the Product Mold was in QuadCommerce.   We will go a bit further wih this post and answer some common questions we receive on product molds

[Q] What is a mold again?

A product mold is, quite simply, a bunch of default settings for creating a product.  Because QuadCommerce products can have dozens of different properties/settings, you can set them once in a mold instead of doing it over and over every time you add a new product.  Molds are not products and do not appear in your online store catalog.

[Q] Do I have to use Product Molds?

[A] No.  Product Molds are completely optional.   If your product catalog has many similar products then you may want to use molds to save time adding products to your store.

[Q] How do I create a new product form a mold?

[A] On the Add New Product page in the ShopKeeper, one of the first things you can do is select a mold to base the new product on.

[Q] Does changing the mold change the products  that were built from it?

[A] No. Once the product is made, only updating that product wil change it.  Changing the mold, will only affect all products added after the mold was changed.  Deleting a mold does not affect any products.

[Q] What is Copy Product?

[A]  Copy Product allows you to take any product and make a copy of that product which really is a new product with all the same properties as the one you copied.  This is a quick way to also build your catalog.  

[Q]  Mold  vs Copy Product?

[A]  The main advantages to using a mold versus copying a product is when you have many products that are similar and want to be able to track the original settings that the products were iniially based on.   Copy Product while a great time-saving feature in its own right  requires that you keep track of which product you used to create a copy  and what you changed.   

Tags: molds, product copy, ecommerce product generation

Posted May 3rd, 2009 by Scott - QC Dev Team