Knowledgebase
How to add configurable products in Magento
A configurable product is a product which has options/attributes which can be configured by the customer. For example, you can sell the same shirt model and allow customers to choose the size of the shirt. The size in this case is the configurable attribute. You can combine the different sizes of this product into a single configurable product.
To be able to create a configurable product you have to make sure that:
- You have created the necessary attributes that you're going to need for the configurable product. The attributes that you need may come prepackaged with Magento. You can check in the admin panel in Catalog>Attributes>Manage Attributes. If needed, you can add new attributes from there.
- You have to make sure from the options of the attribute(s) that its scope is set to Global, its input type is Dropdown and its Use to Create Configurable Product setting is set to Yes.
- You have to add the necessary attribute(s) to an attribute set.
After that you can create the configurable product from Catalog>Manage Products>Add Product button. Make sure you select Configurable Product for product type and the attribute set with the attributes that you need. Then configure the general, price and other settings in the same way as configuring a simple product. Only make sure that from the Inventory tab on the left you set the Manage Stock option to No.
Then click on the Save and Continue Edit button and after that click on the Associated Products tab that's on the left side. You need to do this to add the combinations that customers will be able to select on the frontend. These combinations depend on the configurable attributes. On the Associated Products tab page there are three ways to add the associated products: Create Empty, Copy From Configuration and Quick Create. If you click on the Create Empty or Copy From Configuration buttons, a new window will open with all the product settings. You can configure them in exactly the same way as configuring a simple product. The difference between the two is that in the Create Empty form all options will be empty, while in the Copy From Configuration form most options will have the values that you specified for the configurable product.
The Quick Create form is directly on the Associated Products tab page. In the respective fields you just need to enter the weight, enable the product, make it NOT visible individually, specify its stock and select the value(s) for the configurable option(s). Then just click on the Quick Create button. You can then add the rest of the associated products in the same way.
Once you add the associated products don't forget to save the changes by clicking on the Save button in the top right corner.
For screenshots and some more details you can also check out the Magento configurable products tutorial.