A Configurable product is a product that comprises multiple variants. Each variant in the Configurable product is a separate product in your store as well, and thus can have its own stock management and SKU. A good example for this is clothing, let's say for t-shirts. The Magento sample data contains a t-shirt called "Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer: LOL Cat T-shirt". This t-shirt is available in sizes small, medium and large, and in colors green and red. This means there are six Simple products to track stock for:
- Size small, color green
- Size medium, color green
- Size large, color green
- Size small, color red
- Size medium, color red
- Size large, color red
Usually as a store owner you do not want to display all these Simple products as separate products inside your categories. Instead, generally you want to display the Zolof t-shirt once in your catalog and to offer size and color choices (drop-down lists) on the product detail page. This is the use of a Configurable product; the Configurable product only displays color and size combinations that are in stock.
Setting Configurable products in the Magento admin can take some getting used to. A thorough understanding of Magento's attribute system as discussed in Chapter 4, Simple Products, is very important. If necessary we advise you to (re-)read that chapter before continuing with the following discussion of adding Configurable products.