This section is intended for both site owners and designers of sites where the Catalog and Shopping Cart is enabled.
Topics
Note: Long and Short Descriptions, and images describe below may not be used in your sites configuration. It depends on the template used. Additional fields can be added via custom configuration.
- The default Category has the following fields:
- ID: machine generated unique number identifying the category.
- Name: A unique name for the category, it may include space and can be up to 100 characters long
- Display Order: a floating point number which determines the relative order that categories will appear.
- Short Description: up to 255 characters used to describe the category. Use depends on the various templates. The tag is |.Short Desc..| (note the double period)
- CSDESC: (i.e., Category Short Description) is up to 255 characters in length.
- IMGA, IMGB: two images associated with the category. Use depends on the various template. Print style images (32 bit CYMK) will be silently converted to web format images (24 bit RGB) after upload.
- Menu Add-on: raw text which is appended to side column category lists after the category name (and out side the link). May be image tags or other HTML. Links/references need to be either absolute or site relative (e.g., begin with '/'). Make sure to use apostrophe's rather than double quotes.
- Lone Desc: (i.e., Category Long Description) similar to a content area on a content web page, uses the same editor. However, only the default catalog image library appears in the drop down. (Hint: use a separate window and open the Mange Media tab and use the Copy Link function to select images from other libraries. Use is dependent on the templates. In program to display single product/product family use |.CLDESC.| tag to display the category long description instead.
- Hide: check this check box to block the display of a category (and by inference any products or subordinate categories) in any lists. Note: direct references in, for example a content area, will still display the product. Useful for hiding seasonal categories.
- Determine the basic categories needed for your site.
- Enter the fields required for your site. The minimum is the the Category Name which must be unique (e.g, Boys Jean, vs. Jeans).
- Unless your catalog is very simple, there will be top level categories and subordinate categories. Draw out an outline of the categories to determine the organization of categories.
- Create the top level categories.
- Create the next level of categories and select the parent category or categories under which they will fall using the drop down at the bottom of the page.
- Categories cannot be deleted if they contain either subordinate categories or products. The system should hide the delete option when this is true.
- There are two programs to list categories: catlist2.pl (which always lists all the categories and subcategories under each), and catprodC.pl (which lists all the categories and products listed under the specified category as passed by the parameter "catid" (e.g, catprodC.pl?catid=5 would list all the Categories under category #5 and the products under category number 5). Category Line template (below) defines how each subordinate category would be displayed. and the Product Line template defines how each product is displayed).
- The following TAGS are used to display information about the Current Category in the catalog.tp1 template.
- IMGA,IMGA:L,IMGA:R,IMGA:C display unaligned Image A, left aligned Image A, right aligned Image A and center aligned Image A tags respectively. Note if the contents is not an image (i.e.,g ends in ".png", ".jpg", ".gif" or ".jpeg") only IMGA will contain a value and that value will be the original contents.
- IMGB, IMGB:L, IMGB:R, IMG:C display similar image tags for the second category image.
- CSDESC: display the Category Short Description
- CATLDESC: display the category Long Description.
- SC_CATNAME and SC_PAGETITLE: displays the name of the current category.
Category Line Template (this section is primarily for site designers)
- Background: this template is used to display a category in a list of categories. It is repeated once for each category in the list. The template consists of HTML with embedded tags. It is embedded in a page describing the current/parent category. For this reason the tags used to describe the child category's information are different than those of the parent (e.g, |.Short Desc..| refers to the Short Description of the individual Child Category while |.CSDESC.| refers to the short description of the Parent Category). Note also the trailing period in "Short Desc."
- Tags: Each of the fields listed in the first section is available as a tag (e.g., Category ID, Name, Display Order, Short Desc., IMGA [converted to and image tag if needed], IMGB [also converted if needed], [Menu Add-on], Long Desc, and Hide). In addition the following synthetic tags are available. Note:
- SPACER: Replaced by fill gif with width == to 5 times the level of the category under the present category
- Client: Replaced by the name of the catalog database we are using.
- CATID: Replaced by the current category ID.
- SC_CatEmpty: Replaced with text: There are no items in this category if there are, in fact, no items in the category.
- CCatProdProg: replaced by the configured program to display categories under a parent category and then any products under the parent category.
- CPList: a list of names of the visible parent/standalone products under the current category each enclosed in div id='CPPItem' and set as link to product display page.
- Various ways to begin a Category Line effect how the categories are displayed.
- If the category line begins with list item tag (i.e., LI), then list of categories is surrounded by Un-ordered List tags (i.e., UL and /UL) . Only the two levels of category immediately below the current category are shown
- If the category line begins with HTML comment in containing C:#, where # is a number greater than 1, then the categories will be divided into in # number of columns. If the category line begins with table data tag (i.e., TD) then the line is treated as special case of this where # == 2, that is categories are arranged in two columns. Only the level directly below the current category is shown.
- If the category line begins with a table row tag (e.g., TR) then the entire system is surrounded by a table. Also, all levels of subordinate categories are displayed.
- Note: It the Category Line Template contains an HTML comment in the form of "Depth=#" then that will specify the number of sub-category levels below the current category which will be displayed. This is primary useful when a table row tag (e.,g., TR) begins the row. Warning: do not set above "2" if List Elements are used. catlist2.pl ignores this effect as its designed to list the entire category tree.
- Sample with explanation: (again we are using square brackets rather than angle brackets so the HTML will be visible rather than hidden.)
[tr][td]|.SPACER.||.SPACER.|[a href="?catid=&client="][/a] |.Name.| |.SC_CatEmpty.|[/td][/tr]
Each category is displayed on a row with a link around the categories image followed by the name of the category, followed by (if applicable) "There are no items in this category".
Listing Categories in Templates and Content Pages (this section is primarily for site designers)
- |.TOP2CAT.|: Produce a display of the top level categories with their children below them. Each category family is wrapped in DIV tags with style id of 'top2cat'. Top level categories are 'bolded'. Each listing is a link to the appropriate category display page. Sample use is to provide a list of category families (parent and 1st level children) accross the bottom of a page.
- |.SC_SIDECATLIST.|: Displays complete list of all non-hidden categories in the product tables as table class="sideCatlist" with spacer graphic to cause indenting for each level Sort of a Table of contents for the Catalog
- |.SC_TCATLIST.|: Displays list of top level categories in product tables as table class='TCatlist' one row per category. Use this one if your catalog has a lot of pages.
