Question re. inventory listings

  • Hi,

    I've deployed Perch on one client's site and now have another that might be a good fit for Runway. He wants to list heavy equipment he has for sale, but doesn't need the e-commerce/payment/cart functionality of a full shopping site, but will have between 50 & 100 individual products across several categories for sale. Is the Shop Add-In the best way to go on this? If so, I'll likely download a development version of Runway with the add-in and kick the tires.


    One other question, since I'm here. Is there a recommended way to do a multi-lingual site using either Perch or Runway? I don't have a need right away, but another client with a bilingual (French/English) static site has asked what would be involved in evolving it to a small CMS.


    Thanks,

    Gary

  • drewm

    Approved the thread.
  • Two methods for a multi-lingual site, either create a branched method where the site splits off from en / fr a the top and duplicates the pages between each language, OR multi-region method where you grab the language from the URL param in the runway routes: [en|fr:lang] and then append the language to the content regions so in the CMS you'll see 2 regions for each input on the page.


    Which way to do it really depends on your client, do they expect to have identical content in both en and fr ? if so the multi-region can work well as they edit both en and fr content for the same page in one place not having to navigate to the alternate language page. Some clients have a "stronger" or primary language which has more in-depth content than the secondary language, in this case i'd recommend the branched site method.


    I've used both, and it really does depend on the client.

  • For your product list concern, again you can either use the full shop which will definately work to list the products in a "catalog" layout. Since you're in control of your design with Perch, you can decide if the product page has the traditional "add to cart" controls. This can be an excellent solution if the client "may" in the future want to eventually open up to e-comm. The down side is that you need to setup some default shop configuration like tax rules etc just to use it. Also the product edit page will still contain all the fields required for the perch shop, and this may not all be relvant to the catalog layout. (think quantity, tax etc)


    If ecom is completely out of the picture, you can create the category structure in Categories and use a Collection to store the products. This way you have full control on the product template and the editing experience will be much simpler in the CMS.


    I'd present both options to the client with the pros and cons and let them decide.

  • Hey Jordin,

    Thanks for quick reply. And the excellent advice. I guess my next task is to download everything and start making myself familiar with the controls. I'm definitely going to take your advice via-a-vis exploring both "shop options" ("shoptions"?).


    Thanks again,

    Gary