Modification of Virtuemart/Joomla store

Sheet music and CD store implementation in VirtueMart General description: Customize Virtuemart to sell sheet music and CD’s. The process will be done in several steps, and the first step is described here. If you do a good job on the first step you will get the next ones. The first step is to add support for names and roles connected to products. When you sell sheet music and CD’s the customers need to be able to search for people connected to the products. Artists, composers, arrangers etc. A typical store that utilizes this is Amazone.com. Database modifications: We need two new tables: vm_roles and vm_prod_roles. The People table Since VirtueMart already have a people-table with relevant fields I’d like to use that unless the programmer can come up with a good argument to use a separate table. Relevant VirtueMart table is vm_user_info. Only one field must be added: roles YES or NO. Only people with YES here shows up in the product-people list. The Role Table Contains info about the possible roles that a person can have in a product. Table name: vm_roles Field name Type Comment role_id Int(11) Auto_increment Unique nr role_type Text 255 composer, arranger, artist etc role_short Text 10 Abbr to be used in lists (Ex Comp for composer, Arr for arranger etc) role_sort_order int Sort order in lists Role_placement Text Where should the text appear in layout and whether to display Last name, First Name, or Company fields The People/Product/Role Table One person can have multiple roles in a product (For example he can be both composer AND artist on the same CD). We need a table to define his role(s) in the specific product. Table name: vm_prod_roles Field name Type Comment prod_role_id Int(11) Auto_increment Unique nr product_id Int(11) Linked to product user_id Int(11) Linked to user role_id Int(11) Linked to role Modifications to layout Shop side 1. Include results from the people database in the free text search. Search the first and last name. 2. Include product categories in search. 3. Create two new Browse pages with and without product thumbnails. See attached file for details. 4. Ajax drilldown search system on top of the product listing. See attached file for details. 5. Allow the roles to be visible on all lists in the store through out the check out system, invoices etc. This is to identify products with similar names but different arrangers etc. 6. Add the roles to the “Order by” dropdown list. In other words, it should be possible to order the last name of any person associated with the product. Admin side changes 1. Add system for assigning persons and roles to the product. Since the list of people can be very long, more than 500 people, drop down is not suitable. Use an ajax system similar to the one used in VirtueMart ”related products”. See attached file for details. 2. Create global layout settings to customize where to show these names and how. Where: Behind product name on Browsepages, Flypages, Cartinfo, Invoices… How: Lastname, Firstname or Firstname Lastname or Company With abbreviation for the role or full rolename