Organizing Product Categories
To manage your product groups, navigate to Catalog > Product Groups in the administration area in Smartstore. Using the upper buttons you can activate the list view or the tree view. Here you can add, edit or delete product groups. The list view shows all created product groups in an ordered list and provides you with a search widget so that you can easily find the product group you are looking for. The tree view allows you to rearrange the structure of your merchandise groups and subgroups by dragging and dropping.
List View
The list view offers a filter function that allows you to filter by different commodity group names or the alias. Here you also have the option to export your commodity groups to an XML file.
Tree View
The order of categories you see in the tree view will be applied to the category structure in the frontend of the shop and will be the main navigation that your shop visitor uses to find products in your store. To rearrange your categories you can simply drag them to the designated place and drop them there.
Category Details View
When adding or editing a category, you'll be forwarded to the category details view as shown on the screen below. Here, you can enter all the data that's related to this category in six different tabs. With the buttons in the upper right corner, you can preview the work you've done, save it or delete the category. When you select the option to delete a category, a new window appears asking you whether the subcategories should be deleted or placed in the root.
Category Info Tab
| 250px|Field | Description |
|---|---|
| External link | Different, external reference for this product group in the main menu and in product group listings. E.g. to a landing page that contains a link back to the product group. |
| Name | This is the default value for the category name that's also shown to the shop visitor in the frontend of your shop, as long as you haven't entered differing values for other languages. For more information about languages, see the topic Managing Languages. |
| Description | This is the default value for the category description that is shown to the shop visitor in the frontend of your shop. The description field is also multi-language enabled. |
| Alias | An optional, language-neutral reference name for internal use. |
| Category Template | The category template defines how the category and its products will be displayed to the shop visitor. |
| Picture | This picture will be shown in the frontend wherever categories are shown in an overview e.g. the overview of subcategories within a parent category. |
| Parent Category | You can select the parent category here. |
| Show on Home Page | Defines whether the category will be shown on the start page of your shop. The categories that are defined to be shown on the homepage will be displayed below the introductory text on the start page. |
| Published | Defines whether this category is visible to your shop visitors. |
| Display Order | Defines the display order in which the categories are ordered within their parent category. The display order will automatically be adjusted when ordering your categories within the tree view explained above. |
| Discounts | Defines discounts to be applied to the object. Here you can activate discounts for the specific product group. Remember that only discounts of the Related to categories discount type can be managed here. For more information about discounts, please read Manage discounts. |
| Limited to stores | Specifies whether the entry is available only for specific stores. For more information about multiple stores, see Work with multiple stores. |
| Limited to customer groups | Specifies whether the object is available only to certain groups of customers. For more information about access permissions, see Access restrictions (ACL). |
Search engines (SEO) Tab
In this tab, you can enter specific SEO values for the category e.g. Meta title, Meta keywords or a SEO friendly URL alias. For more information about the fields in the Seach engines tab, read the topic SEO.
Products Tab
In this tab you add existing products to your category. When clicking the button Add A New Product a new window opens which contains a structured list of all products where you can mark several products at once to add them to this category. You can also use the search widget to search for specific products you want to add.
Mega Menu tab
This tab is used to configure the Mega Menu plugin. For more information about Mega Menu, please read Mega Menu Plugin.
Other Tabs
There may be other tabs depending on the plugins you've installed. For information about these tabs, refer to the plugin developer.