studiocardo

Hi carolm29

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, that is definitely a viable implementation. Far from an ideal one in my opinion because:

1. I can lump all white Chenin/Riseling/Sauv Blanc wines in Other, which is another child category of White, which should satisfy my design goal of querying these wines through only one menu item of “Other”. But I lose the ability to query wines under Chenin/Riseling, etc. directly, say, Chenin wines or Riseiling, etc..
2. Or I replicate all the wines under Chenin/Riseling under both Other and its respective subcategory with its namesake. But then I am essentially creating two identical product list, but under different subcategories… That can not be a good design. So much so, I would not consider this to be a viable solution.
3. So I am down to lumping them all in “Other”. Hum…

As for searching by attributes, here’s an example. For these wines, I assigned their origin as an attribute. For example:

Region:
– Napa
– Sonoma
– Paso Roble
– Russian River

So I’d like to enable users to use the menu to query all the wines by their regions, might it be Napa or Sonoma, etc. I even have sub-regions for more details parcels in Napa, Sonoma, etc. But I assume once I can get query by Attribute working, it should be no different if I enable sub-regions. I found a couple plug-ins like Husky that is supposed to extend the search/query ability. Maybe that’s the solution.

Regards,
S

Hi Zubair Zahid

I figured out the answer to my first question. And I am documenting it here for others who might have the same questions in the future. Essentially, to query products from a (child)category, the menu will be:

xx.com/product-category/[slug_of_parent_category]/[slug_of_child_category]

This is what a menu link needs to be. Coming from other CMS, I find this process to be, for the lack of better word, surprising…

Ok, on to the second question, how do I create a query for Other? In my situation, here is an example category structure:

White
– Blend
– Chardonnay
– Chenin
– Sauvinon Blanc
– Riesling
– Torrontes

Because there aren’t that many wines from [Chenin, Sauv Blan, Reisl.], I don’t intend to make a menu item for each of them. Instead, I’ll lump them into Other, so a menu will essentially try to query

xx.com/product-category/white-wine/others

which will return wines that are Chenin+Sauv Blanc+Riesl. But WooComm does not permit different categories to share the same slug. In SQL, it’s easy enough to form a query that excludes unwanted categories, but how does one go about forming such a query in WooComm (that will eventually be translated into corresponding SQL)?

Last but not least, how about query by Attribute?

Regards,
S

Hi Zubair Zahid?

Thank you so much for your support. Allow me to elaborate!

There are four parent categories [Red, White, Espumante, Rose, Others]. This is an example of the structure of Red and White:

Red
– Blend
– Bonarda
– Cabernet Franc
– Cabernet Sauvignon
– Malbec
– Merlot
– Pinot Noir
– Petit Verdot

White
– Blend
– Chardonnay
– Sauvinon Blanc
– Riesling

Orange
– Chardonnay
– Torrontes

So the menu allows the users to query, for example, by Chardonnay (a child category of White), and the URL string looks like:

xxx.com/product-category/white-wine/white-chardonnay/

and it works as expected. However, since the creation of the above URL string by the developer, I added new category of Orange and its two children categories [Chardonnay, Torrontes]. So by following the convention of the URL query string above, I expect

xxx.com/product-category/orange-wine/orange-chardonnay

to return wines under that category combination, but I got a 404. So, what is the right way to compose the query string? What plugins or process or procedure should I have used? In other CMS’s like Joomla, to perform a query (aren’t they always?) via a menu, I would just go to the backend, through a drop down menu to select/compose the appropriate search criteria and the CMS will compose the string for me to embed in the menu. But that does not seem to be the case with WP/WooCommerce. I have no idea what appropriate steps I need to take to come up with the search string. So, for example, if I were to bestow the menu -> Orange -> Torrontes the ability to query all wines under white/torrontes categories, what are the steps? Where are the documentation and tutorials that I can follow?

Also, if I were to search all the wines under White that are not [Blend, Chardonnay, Torrontes], ie all the white wines that fall under “Other”, how do I compose the appropriate menu query string?

And what if I would like to search by attributes?

Thank you for your support.

Stefan

Of course, why didn’t I think of that? Thx!

To waste more of my time? Fine, let me share with you why Caldera should be avoided.

First of all, Caldera form wouldn’t save. It saves as I specified and then once I exited and then return to that plugin after tending to other plugs or whatnot, the work is gone. I thought it was maybe my hosting environment, but I replicated the problem on my MAMP setup as well. I lost more than 4 hours of work. That’s a fatal flaw.

And any help from Caldera? Of course not, I understand I was using the free version so I don’t get priority support (and it’s been >3days and I still haven’t heard from Caldera). So fine, I’m used to working with open source SW and I am comfortable with researching through forum for past discussions, and how well did Caldera do in this setup? Poorly too. They There was a similar discussion like my case from 10 months ago where users were scrambling to find solution for themselves. And with ZERO input from Caldera. I’ve worked with enough SW to know that Caldera has no clue on how to support users.

What else? The multi-page tutorial on YouTube is an incoherent joke. The UI and organization of information on their website is bewildering, inconsistent, and hard to find. Everything about it is amateurish. I only started using Caldera because it’s the “preferred” form creator for Code Monkey’s HIPAA Form. But what a nightmare it has been, nothing but aggravation and frustration.

Caldera might have been good in the past, but it looks like the developers are busy with their day jobs and the Caldera Form is a side gig for them.

So, that’s my experience with Caldera.