Hey K2 community,

I need to catalog hundreds of products for our manufacturing company. I was suggested to use K2 for my Joomla site to accomplish this, and I have K2 already installed, but I'm not sure where to begin.

Kind regards,
Timothy Harden

I am also interested in the cataloging aspects of K2 - I really wish there was some sort of documentation.

In the meanwhile if you really need to get a catalogue up and running quickly VirtueMart rocks - you can upload your whole catalogue at once with the csv improved component.

A bit limited in display options until you really get acquainted with the template structure, but for a fast & easy catalogue it`s hard to beat

Barbara,

Yes I've heard VirtueMart is great. I've been playing around with K2 for 3 or 4 days now, and have actually got a pretty descent databasing system working for me. Are you still interested in tips? Or is there something specific I can help you with?

Kind regards,
Timothy Harden

I am very interested in learning more about the k2 component, but I must admit I`m finding it a bit daunting.

I don `t even know where to start.

You have been having success creating a catalogue using k2?

Yes I have. Could you explain to me how "deep" of a catalog your looking at? For instance, could you explain how many "Levels" or sub-sections you planned on creating?

I found it a bit daunting myself, but because I was short on the amount of time I had to get it up and running, I stuck with and learned a lot about K2. It's relatively simple after you've made a couple of sections.


And you're just cataloging correct? you don't need anyone to make the purchase through the site, only to view them? Let me know a little about what you want to do with the site.

I actually build 6-8 joomla sites / mo, mostly quite small businesses 2-3 of these will be manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers etc who want a catalogue. I pretty much reflexively go to virtuemart because it is so easy, - especially the ability to import hundreds of products in dozens of categories all at once in a csv file - although I often find myself wishing for a bit more flexibility in the catalogue layout & display options.

also having to have separate search engines for the sites content and the sites products is a bit of a pain.

I came across the K2 while at the joomlaworks site - I use a lot of their extensions, & I found it very intriging - but I`m still not exactly clear on what it does.

I was just wondering for instance what the process is for doing the catalogue in K2

you have to manually set up the sections etc. and enter each product in it`s own content item 1 at a time? or is there some sort of batch upload?

You found it quite easy to do after you rolled up your sleeves & got to it?

I appreciate your feedback on this.

Thnx

That's interesting, VirtueMart sounds very simple. If your looking for the ability to affect the content layout of the catalog, K2 gives you a lot of options, not only for how the products should be listed, but how each individual item will appear. Unfortunately, I have not done a batch upload in K2 (though that does not mean the option is not there somewhere). The site I'm working on now called for a very simplistic layout, so I turned almost everything off but the thumbnail images and products descriptions.

Once you have K2 installed it should be listed under "Components" on your administrative dashboard. Click on that. you should now see that you have arrived at a dashboard specifically for K2.

The first step is to create a category. Now, Joomla and K2 can get very complicated and allow for a huge complex catalog, but for now lets just assume that you simply have some links on the left side of your site and each link is its own large, simple section. Click on the "categories" section of K2. Type in a category name (it should probably be titled the same thing as the link the customer is clicking on). Then click save.

Next, go to your "menus" section at the top of the screen and click on "menu manager." You should have some sort of menu already on your site. Click on the "Menu items" button. Now you see the contents of whatever menu you chose. Click on the menu item that has the same name as the category you just created. You should be at the page that lets you change the options for that specific menu item. Now click the button that says "change type" under 'menu item type' at the top of this page. Click on K2, and then select "Item Listing (Category) Layout." Now under "Parameters (Basic)" where it says "Select one or more categories" select the category you just created about 30 seconds ago. This category is where we will be placing the items, and you are simply saying "This page that I am creating will show this category of items."

The last thing you need to do on this page is click "Parameters (System)" on the right side and give the page a title. Click save.

At this point, you have set up a page that will appear when the link is clicked on. You have also told the page that its purpose it to list products, and also which category of products it will be listing.

The final step is to click on "Components --> K2." Now click the "items" section. Create a "new" item. On the right side of the screen, you see the categories option. Select that category you made. Now give the item a title, intro or full text, and even click on the "image" tab at the top and upload an image. Click save. Repeat for as many products as you need.

Tip: If you want to upload an image for each product, do it through the "Image" tab at the top of the item page, not through the button under intro text or full text.

I understand this is a lot of information. I may have been a little over-descriptive, but it honestly boils down to 3 simple steps, so don't get discouraged.

Step 1: Create category
Step 2: Create page
Step 3: Add items to category

Kind regards,
Timothy Harden

Thank you Timothy,

I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

Have a great day!

Please keep in mind the flexibility of K2. Under 'flexibility' I mean the extra fields feature. It means that you can create such fields for the properties of a catalog item, e.g. in the case of books the publisher, the year, ISBN etc.

The best practice IMO is to create an extra fields group for the extra fields related to a category.

In K2 v2.0.0 six types of extra fields are available: text field, textarea, dropdown list, multi-select list, radio buttons and links. This feature is similar for the form generators. Actually, these fields will appear and can be filled in on the 'Extra Fields' tab of an item when you add/edit one.

Thanks for some good tips/pointers so far.

I'm interested in learning if K2 is suitable to use for a property listing/real estate site - which is under redevelopment now - and how i could go about creating the necessary structure using K2. The current lack of documentation is understandable with K2 being new, but leaves me apprehensive about jumping into blind.

So far I've been using hot property to begin the redevelopment, which even with its most recent release still requires many hacks to achieve far less than K2 appears to offer - such as image slideshow, video, google maps, tabs for content display etc. On their own admission the development roadmap for HP is a long way off incorporating any of the features mentioned above. I've also looked at Com Property which has many very good features but... just not too sure about it.

Tim's & Jozef's explanations and comments give some guidance. The biggest concern I have is the ability (or my lack of it) in setting up the listings/categories etc to be searchable in a way that real estate sites tend to be. Any guidance in how K2 could achieve that would be welcomed. I'm assuming that the use of tags could assist in filtering results? Is it possible to make custom fields searchable from within K2?

Also, any info/suggestions on how to go about integrating listings with front page slideshow.

Kind regards
Mark

Hey Mark,

It's nice to see a lot of others interested/having the same problems. I know that sounds like a bad thing, but with little documentation it is important to see what other people are doing with K2.

For my Manufacturing site, I needed a quick and simple database of my products. I had many products, but the branches of my "database tree" (i.e. how many subsections I had) were minimal. If anyone has a need similar to mine, the solution I provided is quick and easy.

But lets not forget what József had pointed out. The 'extra fields' feature provides much more depth and customization than using the 'items' method. If you are doing a Real Estate site with many listing, road maps, etc. I would highly suggest looking into extra fields like József said to do. I haven't had much time to play around with 'extra fields,' but as I do I will post any helpful pointers here. Remember to ask as many questions as you need to. There are many people in the forum who would be glad to help you.

As far as your question about search capabilities, there are a ton of great Joomla extensions that will provide you with a good internal search engine for your website. Just add one of these extensions to your Joomla site, and you shouldn't have to do much more than that. It's pretty easy.

Here is a link to Joomla "Site Search" extensions:
extensions.joomla.org/extensions/search-&-indexing/site-search

Good luck, have fun customizing, and come back here if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Timothy Harden

Maybe use a Sphinx search index engine that would be nice if integrated with Joomla ?

some postings about it here:

forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=471&t=384684

www.jfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3894

www.sphinxsearch.com/forum/view.html?id=3860

Jozsef,
I've worked through the category creation for the property site - and enabled the categories as menu links - straight forward as Timothy described.

I've created a handful of test extra fields (price, bedrooms, bathrooms etc) and have subdivided them into field groups.

But when adding an item the extra field groups/fields are not visible or available in the tabbed item interface.

Somewhere there must be an option to associate field groups to categories - i just can't find it. Any pointers of where to locate it?

The installation is clean without any K2 dummy data.
Kind Regards
Mark

A quick update for anyone following Timothy's instructions above. K2 V2 contains a neat Tools Module which has several functions built in - one of which is a category menu list - still needs to be published but the K2 category list pages are automatically generated.
Mark

Hey there! Does anybody know if the "upload image" function on the image tab for every article works if one's working on WAMP server? It seems that it doesn´t copy the image to my server, once i upload it.

Let's say the image WAS uploading successfully, where should i look for it? In the images/stories folder? or just the images folder?

Thanks to everybody in advance.

Oooops! Just noticed that I missed this thread and Mark has been waiting my answer regarding assigning the extra fields to the items. Unfortunately I cannot continue with tha above thread, hopefully it'll be good here as well :)

You can assign an Extra field group to a category, on the Add/Edit Category screen.

Hi,

I'm just starting to play around with K2, it has huge potential.

I have a VirtueMart (1.1.2) customisation job at the moment, and was wondering if it is possible to use K2 to implement a 'prepaid credit' or a 'gift voucher' style for payment of purchases? (ie:I have $100 credit, buy something for $15 and I still have $85 credit left in my account)

any thoughts and feedback is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards
Rick

If you plan on using Virtuemart, expect to run into this issue, which has lingered since several versions back and concerns the ability within the backend admin section to select categories for the product due to an Ajax conflict.

k2community.joomlaworks.gr/forum/topics/k2-conflict-w-virtuemart-ajax

If all that is necessary is a list with no serious e-commerce functionality, perhaps other than Paypal or similar payment gateway, then K2 may be an excellent choice, due to its extensive templating at the article and category levels. Much can be done in the way of populating pages and/or categories with relevant content, such as RSS news feeds and onsite content, which I use to bolster SEO on those specific pages. Add to that the use of the extra fields offered in K2, and you could have a very dynamic, feature rich and user friendly product catalog.

Otherwise, for the sake of simplicity and a less extensible platform, Wordpress may be a better platform for quick deployment and customer manageability.