Creating confugurable products is more work than adding custom attributes but it might be better in some cases (keeping track of stock, having one set of attributes to select from etc).

In short the steps needed are

1. Create the attributes that will be configurable by the user – for our example they will be Size and Color
2. Create the attribute set that will be assigned to the variant products – for our example, we’ll call it “T-shirt”
3. Create the individual variant products
4. Create the configurable product, and add the “T-shirt” attribute set
5. Add the individual variants to this configurable product

Create the attributes that will be configurable by the user – for our example they will be Size and Color
In the adminpanel this is under Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes
Scope needs to be set to Global and Input type to drop down. Once this is done then Use To Create Configurable Product is shown and this should be set to yes. Setting required to yes is a good idea as well.

Under label / options create a label (for instance size) and give the different options it can take.

Repeat for all attributes you want to create (for instance size and color)

Create the attribute set that will be assigned to the variant products – for our example, we’ll call it “T-shirt”
Now we’re ready to create an attribute set called “T-shirt” to start using for this product. Go to “Catalog -> Attributes -> Manage Attribute Sets” and press “Add New Set”.
Give the new set a name and then drag and drop the attributes to the group where you want them to be when creating a product.

Create the individual variant products
Create a product and make sure that you use the attribute set you have created. Add the attributes where you placed them.


Repeat for all the products you have

Create the configurable product, and add the “T-shirt” attribute set

Add the individual variants to this configurable product
This can be done when the configurable product is created or later on using edit product.

And then it should look something like this in the shop

Some products have a number of options that are important for the customer to select.
Here I show how to make a product with options (color and size) where Magento only sees one product – so it won’t it will not be possible to see how many large in red you have from Magento.

When you create a product in the admin panel there is a label Custom Options.


Use “Add new option” to make the option (color, size or whatnot)
Then for each of the options use add new row to add the deferent values that the option can have.
The column labeled price is for adding a extra cost for a option (if for instance the red shirt should be more expensive).

Then this will look something like this in the store

Then only down sides I have seen with this is that I have to add the options one time for each of the products (but that is also nice since not all products have the same values) and that Magento will treat this as one single product so I can’t let Magento manage the stock for this/these products.

When I was truing to upload images to products in the Magento admin panel I got the following error:
SSL Error: Invalid or self-signed certificate while uploading image from backend

The way I solved this issue was by setting the timezone on the computer that I was uploading from to the same timezone as the settings in Magento.

Other suggestions to try out if that don’t work:

• If you are using certificate: Verify that it is valid, you have correct domains etc
• Set use secure url in admin to false