I am in the process of building an AutoParts Store using Joomla and VirtueMart. I was wondering if there was a way for the end user to search by Year, Make, Model of a car, and then have the corresponding car parts be listed.
I realize this is pretty complex, and don't expect to have this solved with a simple quick fix, but any advice or a push in the right direction would be appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
I hate to be a wet blanket, but it's not that simple. The vast majority of auto parts have a one to many relationship with the cars it will potentially fit on. For example, Ford used the same oil filter on dozens of models over a 30+ year period, and that filter also fits a bunch of Chrysler applications. The first think you are going to need to do is put together a good Year/Make/Model table that lists all of the cars you will be selling parts for. That's actually a lot harder than it sounds because you also have to consider engine and in some cases depending on the parts, trim package and other important options.
The good news is that you only need to add one field to the VM products. The field should be a list of all the IDs for each year/make/model that the part fits on.
Doing a good year/make/model implementation is a pretty tall order, good luck!