Product Features

BackOffice>>catalog>>product>>features

Click on the main tab “catalog” and then select a product within a category you wish to use from the page. I am using the MacBook that is included with the default theme (Laptop category).

Now click the  products “features” tab. This is not the features shown for the sub-navigation but the feature on the product itself “4.features“ as shown below

Above is displayed the features you can apply to this product (in our case were using the demo data, category Laptops: product: MacBook). On this page will be displayed;

At first (Fig 05 below) it may look like all features displayed (which are all the features you have just created in catalog>>features, irrespective of product. Go to Catalog>>creating features to learn how to create features) will be automatically applied to this product as they are shown in this view. However, if we make no choice in the value of a feature such as CPU and the customised field (which we will come to in a moment) is left blank, nothing will be shown to the website visitor.

Note:  It would be nice to be able to set-up a features group and to have defaults for the feature values within such a group. This would make it easy and faster to apply a group of features to products that have the same featured values and then change only those values that differ, but this is not possible in the current release of Prestashop.

If you created the features in the example used in catalog>>features, you will immediatly notice the sort order has changed from that shown in catalog>>features. As previously explained, Prestashop is not consistent in this regard and there is no control for managing the order you want values or Features displayed (in our case screen size was the first feature group created but its now shown last.)

Add our features and values to this product"

Now we can specify what features we want to use and what value within each feature should apply to our MacBook. Select the drop down for CPU.

Note: If you dont have any features created, when you select the "features" tab you get the option to choose "Add new features". When you select this option, Prestashop will pop open a warning box "Are you sure you want to delete enetered product information". This message can be confusing. Basically, any changes you may have entered (or if this is a new product you have created), but you have not yet saved those changes, they will be lost if you say "Say".Saying yes does not delete the product or any information that was previoulsy saved. So make sure you save your changes first by canleiing this option, saving your changes and then selecting "Add new features". This will direct you to the sub-navigation features. That is where you create all your features, not how you want to use the features on this product

choose Intel® Celeron® processor 450 then from memory choose 1GB and on screen size choose 19" LCD Display. then click update features. We have now added these features and values to our MacBook.

To see how this looks on your website, from the quick access drop dowm menu choose "My shop" or open a new browser tab and navigate to the MacBook product page. Click the datsheet tab near the bottom of your page to see the features you have just applied to this product. This should now look like the image below.

Adding Customized fields

One very nice feature of Prestashop is the ability to create a feature and instead of having to create feature values to cover every situation that you would have to select from the drop downs, you can simply enter a value into the customised field.

Lets change our memory to 1.5GB as a one-off for our product. Go back to catalog,>>product>> choose the MacBook and click on the products features tab.

In the customised field, to the right of memory type , enter 1.5GB in the customised field for memory. Now chnage the IGB that is showing in the memory tab to --- and and click "Update features". (If you have a value selected in the drop downs, this will override any customer value you have entered)

Now go back to your frontOffice, view the MacBook and click on the "Data Sheet" tab. You should now see;

For any product, that you do not want a feature displayed, simply leave the choise as --- in the drop down and it will not be shown for that product.

You should now understand how to add features to your products.

Features and Attributes
The last point to be made is that features are different to attributes. if you wanted to give your users the choiice of chaning product options, without creating a seperate product, use attributes. For example if our MacBook had 1GB on memory as standard and 2GB was an option at an additional £20.00, you would use attributes to set this up.