filtering manufacturers with attributes vs the manufacturs filter option

Hi,

I have a question about the ajax filters. What is best practice considering performance for NC 2.8. Filter manufacturers by setting up manufacturing attributes or enable the manufacturs filter option in the Ajax Filters settings (which filters from the nop manufacturers tables) ?

I'm asking this since I used to add the manufacturer as an attribute fot each product. It saves time if I can skip that. When I now enable the manufacturs filter option, I get 2 manufacturer filter blocks so I have to decide what to do. Remove all manufacturer attributes or disable the manufacturs filter option,

Thanks for any advice!

Hi hanz,

I think the best you can do is to use the Manufacturer of the product rather than using a specification attribute for the following reasons:
1. It is easier to specify a manufacturer, which you should already have in the system rather than creating a duplicate specification option for this manufacturer.
2. It is much better to use manufacturer for the end user as they will also be able to browse the manufacturer page and see the products assigned to this manufacturer.
3. In terms of performance in 2.8 I can't say for sure, which is better as this needs to be checked on a database with a profiler. But I don't remember anyone complaining about the manufacturer filter. If at some point you decide to upgrade to new nopCommerce version you won't need to worry about performance and which filter to use as everything in the Filters is now handled from a stored procedure and is much much faster than it used to be in 2.8.

If you decide to remove the Manufacturer specifications you can easily do so by setting all the options in the database not to be filterable and then they won't appear in the Filters.

Hope this information is useful!

Thanks!