Automatic PDF Catalogue

A printed catalogue, without the printing work

Your products change every day. A hand-made catalogue is out of date the next morning, and redoing it costs a day's work. This module builds it for you, from your real catalogue: prices, photos, references, descriptions, special offers. You never retype anything.

Three forms, one source

• The downloadable PDF. Your customers keep it, print it, send it to a friend. Clickable table of contents, bookmarks in the reader, careful layout.
• The online flip catalogue. It turns like a real catalogue, in the browser, with nothing to install.
• The made-to-measure catalogue. Visitors tick the sections they care about and get their own PDF — an illustrated quotation they built themselves.

A full build, in one button

This is what is new in this version, and it changes everything for large catalogues. Until now a full build meant the command line, which ruled out anyone without console access. A button now starts it from the back office, with a progress bar and a stop you can press at any time.

The work advances in small batches, requested one after another. No single step is long enough to be cut off by the server: 500 and 504 errors are out of reach by design, not by luck. Close the tab and nothing is lost — the build resumes exactly where it stopped.

It does not slow your shop down

The build happens aside, then the data stays on disk. The public pages — the online catalogue, the made-to-measure catalogue — no longer query the database at all. On a modest server, the difference shows.

It works at night, if you want

As soon as a product, a price or a photo changes, the module notes that there is work to do. The scheduled task runs, rebuilds, publishes. Next morning your catalogue is up to date, and you did nothing.

You keep control of the look

• Cover page with your image, title and subtitle.
• Editorial page: your welcome words, your story.
• Partners page, with their logos and addresses.
• Primary and accent colours, discreet background pattern or a background image of your choice.
• Catalogue logo: the shop's, a dedicated one, or none.
• A second logo for dark backgrounds: the module picks the right version on its own, the light logo on dark ground, the normal one elsewhere.
• Choice of sections to include, out-of-stock products shown or hidden.
• Buttons built into your theme: in the footer, on the home page, in the navigation bar.

It tells your subscribers

The catalogue is emailed to your newsletter subscribers, with a minimum delay you set so they are never tired of it. You can add recipients by hand. Sending is triggered from the command line, after a successful publication, or with one click from the module page.

What you will know

The module counts downloads and online views. You know whether your catalogue is being used, or not.

New in the latest versions

• The page-turning catalogue takes up to 20,000 products, and its "filter by category" panel now offers every one of your categories, with no exception.
• Too many products to page through at once? Visitors pick their sections in one click and the catalogue rebuilds itself, fully page-turnable.
• The dot pattern behind the pages is at last visible in the PDF, exactly as on the shop.
• A logo for dark backgrounds, chosen automatically from the background colour.
• The catalogue contents page is set in two columns: fewer pages before the products.
• The settings screen is split into nine titled sections instead of one long column.

Installation

Upload, install, set the title and colours, click Build the whole catalogue. Ten minutes. A complete bilingual manual, French and English, comes with the module.