Concept of Child products
The concept of parent and children products indicates properties depedencies between the two products. Child product has the characteristics of the product parent, but can also have his own characteristics.
Child products are derived from parent products.
- if a value is changed in a parent product, then all the values of the children products are changed.
- if a value is changed in a child product, then it overwrites the value of the parent.
The only parameter that the child product does not inherit and must be unique is the slug/ alias.
This concept can be used to create fast and slightly different variations of a product by only changing prices or images or categories or shoppergroups, etc, ...
Behaviour of the custom fields for the parent and child products
For VirtueMart 2.0.x
Either all customfields are overwritten, or none.
To overwritte the customfields, check the box Overwrite plugin values of the parent in the customfield tab.
For VirtueMart version 2.1.x
Each custom field can be overwritten individually
Concept of product pattern
Unpublished parent products can be used as product patterns. Set a different currency than the shop currency as standard, or use for every category an own standard image. It is also very handy to for a customfield pattern.
Cloned Products
A cloned product duplicates a product, but there is no dependencies between the products. Be aware that images are seens as medias and treated like categories or manufacturers. That means, that cloned products use the same media.
Please read here for a more detailled description docs.virtuemart.net/manual/general-concepts/186-derived-products-product-pattern-child-products