Magento User Guide: Managing Categories

Hello and welcome back to the second part in the series of the Fisheye Magento User Guides. If you haven’t read the first part yet which covers the Magento dashboard you can read it here, or if you would like a full list of our upcoming Magento guides just click here.

In this guide we will be looking at how to create new or edit existing categories from the admin area.

The manage category page allows you to create, edit, delete and rearrange your categories for all Magento stores. The page itself is split up into two areas, the category tree and the category information sections.

The category tree allows you to click and drag any category rearranging the order in which they are seen on the front end of your website. You can view more detailed information about a category by simply clicking on it in the tree and the information will load up on the right.

The right hand side is split up into four tabs; the General Information tab displays information about the category itself, the Display Settings tab allows you to control how the category will displayed in the front end, the Custom Design tab allows you to configure the look of your category and finally category products allows you to add, remove or order products within a category.

Before we take a look at each of these sections in more detail it’s worth noting that the first level categories in Magento are only used for Store Roots and will not be displayed in the main navigation. If you find that categories are not displaying in the menu its worth checking that they are assigned to a root category.

The General Information Tab

This contains all the fields that make up the basic information of the category, here’s a brief explanation of all the fields:

Name – Simply the name of your category that is displayed on the website.

Is Active – If the category is active or disabled

URL Key – Magento automatically generates a URL Key from the category name when you create a category, however if you wish you can change this to help with search engine optimisation. For example if the name of the category you have entered is jewelry then you may want to change the url key from ‘jewelry.html’ to ‘costume-jewelry.html’. Its worth noting that any old URLs will automatically redirect to new ones by default, or you can disable this option if you wish with the check box.

Description – The description of the category, you can use the wyswig editor to bold, underline or link words within this field.

Thumbnail image – This image is normally used on a parent category page, and allows you to have a separate image on the category itself. The actual display of this image is dependent on the layout and design of your website.

Image – The image shown on the category page, again the size and location of this will depend on the theme used.

Page Title – Here you can control the meta title tag for the category displayed in the browser title bar.

Meta Keywords – Will be added to the keyword meta tags of the web page. All key phrases should be separated with a comma.

Meta Description – Used in the meta description of the web page. This description will often appear in the search results of search engines as the summary text.

Include in Navigation Menu – If this is set to yes then the category will display in the top navigation bar on the website. If this is set to no then it wont appear, but you will still be able to go to it by going directly to the URL of the category.

The Display Settings Tab

Allows customisation of how the category is displayed on your website.

Display Mode -Three possible modes to choose from here:

Products Only – Displays just products that have been assigned to this category in either the grid or list format.

Static Block Only – Displays the static block that you have assigned in the CMS Block field below.

Static Block and Products – Displays both the specified static block as well as the products from this category.

CMS Block – Static blocks (which are created within the CMS -> Static Blocks)can be selected here. Static blocks must exist before they can be assigned and they will only be shown on the category page if one of the static block modes is selected in the field above.

Is Anchor – Causes a category to inherit the products in its sub-categories. For example if you have a category called Furniture with the sub-categories Tables and Chairs. If you set the “Is Anchor” Field for Furniture to Yes, all the products in the Chairs and Tables categories will appear in the Furniture category.

Available Product Listing Sort By – This allows you to select which sort options will appear on the category page. The options selected here will only be visible if one of the product display modes is selected in the above field. You can sort by any product attribute, to make your product attribute appear in this list go to catalogue > attributes > manage attributes, select the product attribute and set Used for Sorting in Product Listing to yes.

Default Product Listing Sort By – Allows you to select the default sort order for the products on the category page. The default option selected here will only be visible if one of the product display modes is selected in the above field.

Layered Navigation Price Step – Allows control over the price steps that appear for this particular category’s layered navigation. here you can override the default values set within the configuration.

The Custom Design Tab

Controls the design elements of the category page, allowing the theme to control the page appearance, rather than how the category page is laid out which is controlled by the display settings tab.

Use Parent Category Settings – Quite simply if this is set to Yes then the settings within this section will be inherited form its parent category, if you select Yes the following fields will be greyed out:

Custom Design – This field allows you to pick a design style for your category page. These must have already been created as themes. To change the design of the category page simply select the theme you want from the Custom Design drop-down. Magento does come with some default design options out of the box. If you leave this blank it will automatically default to the theme that is set globally.

Apply to Products – This allows you to carry through the custom design to products, selecting Yes here will carry the theme through to the products within this category.

Active From/To – These fields allow you to select a time frame in which the category will automatically switch to the design you have chosen. After the date on the to field has gone the category will automatically switch back to the global option for the design. If no from/to dates are specified the design updates specified here are assumed to be active. This functionality is particularly useful for controlling seasonal themes.

Page Layout – Allows you to select a different page template defined in Magento. Options available by default are: Empty, 1 column, 2 columns with left bar, 2 columns with right bar, 3 columns. You may also find custom templates in this section if they have been designed for you.

Custom Layout Update – this is an XML block to alter page layout. The Update will display anywhere on the category page. This XML can be used to bring in element to the page, for example a static block such as a banner.

Category Products Tab

Allows for the maintenance of products within the category, used to add, remove and change the order of products. Adding products to categories is also handled by the Manage Products section of the admin area. This section is particularly useful for the bulk change of products within categories.

You can search for products (the Yes/ No/ Any drop-down searches for products in the category, not in the category or both, receptively) and simply click the check box to add or remove them.

Position – Position indicates the numerical position in which a product will be displayed when the “Position” sort order is selected and this is the only editable within this tab. As a Tip always put plenty of space within your position numbers, for example 10,20,30 so when you add another product to the category you can slot it in between position 10 and 20 by numbering it 15.

Bulk Editing of Categories
Although the category management area in the Magento Admin gives you all the control you need, if you are setting up or modifying a lot of categories at the once you may with to be able to import and export category data for manipulation within a spreadsheet.

Fisheye have developed a simple module that allows you to do this, its available from our website LINK and costs £39.99, it’s easy to install and comes with 12 months tech support.

All the fields are contained on the import and export, so for example if you want to update all the meta information on your website in one go, it will save you a lot of time. Also a neat feature is that you can force the category ID’s that Magento assign to the categories, which is great when transferring product data from one website to another.