Hi Everyone
Has anyone built any Automotive Dealership websites with RW or have any ideas on what set of plugins / stacks would be required for managing inventory?
I would love to know everyones thoughts.
Thanks.
You could work with the G-Sheet Stacks of @weavium and Google sheets. Once you figured out the layout (take the G-Sheet examples and modify them) it works a charm and the client or you can add/change items/descriptions/prices/data easy and within minutes and they will appear on the website instantly. Using it for dogs for adoption but can be designed for everything with inventory. Take also Repository from @instacks and the client can upload the photos within a browser and just put the link to the photos in the Google sheet.
[Körbchen gesucht - Hundefreunde Europa e.V.](http://Hundefreunde Europa)
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Depends what you are looking for…
Currently I run this site https://slipwayautos.co.uk which is currently being rebuilt at https://betasite.slipwayautos.co.uk
The original site uses the Aptenon theme and various stacks (new one will use the Source framework) but the car sales page is a php script purchased from code canyon, as at the time and to a degree now, nothing in world of RW addons/stacks will do.
To explain, it depends how many cars and how good you want/need searching to be. As far as I know (if someone else knows other wise PLEASE let me know) it is not possible to search/filter by Make then Model in any of the current RW blogs etc. as well as other parameters such as fuel, transmission etc. Single Author or Subject tags could be used to a point but not idea. The Car Dealer Pro script I got is very functional but not easy to integrate into an existing RW site. Also not very SEO friendly, no metadata etc. The developer has been promising updates for a while but no new release in over 2 years.
Jannis has said this feature may come to Poster 2 (no fixed date but due early next year I believe) and should come to Joe Workman’s TCMS 2 (not sure if it’ll be final to final with accommodation) but this isn’t expected until mid 2020. Armadillo is also getting a revamp but no clear idea on features/release date yet from Jonathon.
The suggestion of Weaviums’ GSheet is possible if you aren’t looking to display many vehicles and no photo gallery for the cars.
Hope that helps,
Paul
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Impressive site!
I keep circling back to EasyDB Freeform Pro. I just need to schedule time to do a training session with them.
I’ve looked at it a few times but it doesn’t quite look like it can do what I’d like it to do. I may be wrong but it looks like you can view database records but the multi filter options aren’t really there, well not the ones I’m looking for!
I’ve learnt a bit about php to help customises the car sales page, it’s been good. Was thinking of even trying to take the next step up and build some stacks to pull the information from the database that the Car Dealer Pro script creates as the admin end of it works well and I don’t fancy having to rebuild my own. As with many things there’s never been the time but if I make any headway I’ll let you know
For several sites I am using @joeworkman PowerGrid CSV.
Thanks Aaron, though have to ask is it the current site? Curious what you think of the layout for the beta site?
I have been looking into the G-Sheet option and it is really really cool, however there is one GIANT draw back. I don’t see any way to generate a details page for an item. All you can do is make a fancy results page. I need to be able to generate a details page that would offer up all the product details about a listing with a long write up and an image gallery.
@thebugnut Okay, I have not used G-sheet yet (though I do have it). I’m not sure what you mean by a “fancy results page”. A page is a page. I’m guessing what you really mean is G-sheet transforms your CSV into a nice results page (with all results) but not an individual page for each item. That would be true … but …
can’t you add a link within your CSV that points to the specific detail page? Of course you need to create that page in RW, but displaying that URL as something like a button within G-sheet that says “more details” (or similar) should be simple enough. Is this really not possible?
It seems G-sheet can do just this. Check out:
https://www.weavium.com/tutorials/gsheet
Specifically scroll down to the Button stack where it says:
The Gsheet Button works in the same way as the Gsheet Image stack, allowing you to set the button link to an attribute value from your spreadsheet. : )
I may be misunderstanding what you want, but it seems this button stack would serve the purpose you want: a direct link to a full details page for each product.
Yes, Matthew, that is how Gsheet can do this - add a link in the Google-sheet and make a Gsheet button which gets the information (=link) from the cell in the Google sheet.
With Repository and Gallery3 you could quickly upload pictures in a folder and connect from Gallery3 to this folder - photo gallery done.
For the other details you could add Gsheet stacks again and connect to another Google sheet made for this car/item/product.
There is also a search/filter function stack within Gsheet.
@Mathew A traditional database driven solution would usually have two main dynamic pages. The first is a results page that would show the listings in the database based on a set of search criteria. Using the repeat function each listing is populated on the page. It seems that GSheets would be great for this part of the job. The second is the detail page that gets dynamically populated when a record ID is passed from the results. The details page knows that it needs to query the database and fill in the blanks with the appropriate data for that unique Record ID. This is where the GSheets solution falls short.
On a small website it would be easy to create a dedicated page for each listing and have that content populated from the GSheet, but if you are creating any type of catalogue you could have hundreds of products. You would not want to be building and maintaining that many pages.
What I was hoping could be done with GSheets is having the ability to pass a unique Record ID from a results page one master detail page that then gets populated from the main spreadsheet.
I believe others have used RapidCart Pro as a catalogue (without any purchasing abilities). Is the issue with Total CMS that it doesn’t have enough sorting categories?
Hi @thebugnut
EasyDB is the way forward 
Secure, lightbox integration, detail pages and tons more. I’m available to screen share and help out anyone get started. Just email me through my site 
https://www.stack-its.com/support.php
Bill
Stack-Its
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@thebugnut Okay, I got it. Yes, with a smaller website the G-sheets approach would work just fine. But with your project it might be a pain in the behind. Hopefully one of the other options, EasyDB or RapidCart Pro or something else, will work to meet your needs. Good luck!
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@Bill I keep coming back to EasyDB and Freeforom Pro. I should just buy a lisence already for my own domain and master it. I need to jump on a screen share demo with you, but time is never on my side. I will fire you an email with some additional questions.
Take Bill up on his offer, you will not be disappointed! Great solution, exactly what you need…
I have a training session with him on Tuesday!
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