Categories

The Categories Page will be the first page you will use to setup your online store catalog. The names of the categories of your catalog depends on what types of products you will be selling. For example, the online demo 'Digiland Online' sell three types of products: 1. Computer Hardware, 2. Computer Software, and 3. DVD movies. So we would use these three names as our categories: Hardware, Software, and DVD Movies.

Now let's look at the page for setting up your categories. There are 4 columns in the table. Let go through each one:

Categories - This column is a list of categories that are currently in your catalog. At the bottom of this column you can enter the name of the new category.

Sort Order - This column controls what order the categories will be displayed in your catalog. Categories with a lower number will be displayed towards the top of the list and categories with a higher number will be displayed at the bottom of the list. So according to our online demo, "Hardware" will always be at the top of the list of categories displayed and 'DVD Movies' will always be at the bottom. You can edit this number at any time.

Image - Images are optional but recommended. This column indicates the path on the server that the image for the category is located. A green dot to the left indicates the image is present at the location specified. A red dot indicates that the image is not found. In other words, a green dot means that the image will show up in your catalog. All Category images should be kept similar in size. Something around 85 pixels by 60 pixels should be fine. The image should be cropped first to remove all unwanted surroundings. Images are automatically resized if the width of the image is larger than specified in the "Images" page of the "Configuration" section.

Action - This column indicates the actions that are available. There are two: edit and delete. When editing, you can change the name of the category, sort order, and image. Be very careful when deleting a category! Deleting a category will effectively delete all subcategories and products underneath it.

To enter a new category follow these steps:

1. Type in the name of the category at the bottom of the categories column.
2. Enter the sort order number to control where in the list you want this category displayed.
3. Upload an image by clicking on the browse button and selecting an image from your hard drive. It should be a JPEG (.jpg) or a GIF (.gif) type image.
4. Finally click on the button labeled insert at the end of the row.

You should now see your new category entry in the table.