Categories

Available for both B2B and B2C sites (but not informational sites), a category is basically a folder that contains your products. The system is set up by default to start with a "Root" category, which is by default your home page. If you did not create any categories of your own, and had all products assigned to the root category, all the products would display on the home page. This process is done dynamically. You add new categories and products to the system and as long as you keep the default behavior, they will be added to your site automatically. Note: you can change in the site settings what page you want to start with for your home page. By default we start with the root category, but it does not have to stay that way.

Often you want to organize the products instead of having them all displayed together so you can create additional categories of your own. If you choose to have those categories set to the Root category, then instead of seeing all the products, you would see all the categories.

If you will be using categories to organize and display similar products, create the categories first to avoid having to go back into all your product settings later and assigning to the correct categories. When you create a category, the choice is to assign it to the root, or alternatively to another category (making the new category a subcategory of the one you assign it to). In a similar way, a product can be assigned to a category, or alternatively to root. You can have an unlimited number of categories.

Whatever is assigned to root will display in the Home page. Whatever category or product is assigned to a category (instead of root) will only be seen after clicking the Category on the Home page.

To set up categories in your site, or to edit the Root category, go to: Admin > Sites > Choose a site > > Catalog > Categories

Edit the Root Category

To edit the default home page (the root category), click on the pencil icon beside the row that the root category is on. You will see a long description area and a text editor. Go ahead and add images, text, links, etc. in that area. This information will appear above any other categories and products you have displaying on the root category page.

Below is an image of the long description area for the root category. Look at the image below this one to see where on the home page the long description is added.

The image below shows where the long description for the root category will show up on your starting page.

Create a New Category

Click on the link at the top of the page "Add New"

General Information Tab

Category Name - Give the category a unique name. You can not have two categories with the same name in the same site without the save failing. The maximum number of characters that can be used in category name is 80.

URL Name - This provides a URL for the category (a unique address that your category page can be found on) Example: "My Category" will have a URL of http://www.mywebsite.com/categories/mhycategory Enter a unique URL name for this cateogry. You can not have a duplicate URL name without causing a save failure so be careful in your naming conventions.

Parent Category Page - Parent and Subcategories. Select another Category to be the Parent if you want to create a Subcategory. When Storefront visitors click the (Parent) Category, they will see the Subcategories and any Products assigned to the Parent Category. Also see Navigation: Adding Subcategories to a Menu.

Long Description Tab

Text Editor - Just like the long description for the Root category explained earlier, the long description will appear above the products on this category page. You can enter text, images, links, tables, etc. in the text editor. Click here to download a PDF on using the text editor.

Short Description Tab

Text field entry- The short description should be a short description of the category. This appears below the category image on the page.

Example in the image below. The "Custom Vinyl Banners as low as $20" is the short description for the Banners Category.

SEO Tab

Available in B2C sites only. If you would like to specify unique SEO information for this category, enter it here. If you leave it blank, the default settings you set up in the site settings > SEO / HTML tab will be used.

Page Title - To override the title of the page, enter the information here
Author - This feature lets you define the author of pages by inserting a meta tag in the head of the page.
Content Language - The language attribute tells search engines what natural language the website is written in (e.g. English, Urdu or French)
Robots - The robots attribute, supported by several major search engines, controls whether search engine spiders are allowed to index a page, or not, and whether they should follow links from a page, or not (e.g. noindex, nofollow).
Copyright - The copyright META tag defines any copyright statements you wish to disclose about your webpage documents.
Revisit After - The Revisit META tag defines hw often a search engine or spider should come to your website for re-indexing (e.g. 1 Days, 10 days).
Description - The description attribute provides a concise explanation of a web page's content.
Keywords - Provide keywords pertaining to the sites content.

While Pressero provides the functionality you need for good SEO data, we are not SEO experts and do not give advice on what information should be entered into these areas. You should refer to the many helpful resources for SEO or consult an SEO expert. We do have helpful information in our support portal and occasionally we also have webinars on the subject to help you.

Artwork Tab

Upload Category Image (*.png,*.jpg, *.gif, *.bmp) - upload or replace an image for this category. This will appear as an icon on the category page. Allowed file types are *.png,*.jpg, *.gif, *.bmp but .png is preferred since transparancy is supported.

Category images should be at least 300px on each side. From this “master”, the Pressero system will automatically create and use three different image sizes within the storefront. If you have the Professional or Enterprise package, you can use the Image Pack (available from your Aleyant sales rep) as a resource for Category or Product images. If you don't load your own artwork for a Category, a default diskette-like image will display.

Please note that your browser may temporarily cache the previous image used in the admin view. You can wait 5-10 minutes or try flushing your browser cache (consult your browser settings). From experience I can say that if you get the comment that your changes were saved, feel comfortable moving on to other things and soon your will see the new image you uploaded. If there is a problem with the image you upload the system will let you know.

Deleting and Undeleting a Category

Deleting/Undeleting. Deleting is also done in the editing window by clicking the Delete button. To undelete a Category check the box for "Include Deleted Categories" at the top-right of the Categories page, select the item, and click Save.