Thread: how to show products instead of sub catagories

Hi Folks,
I'm wondering if there's an easy way to change the way my categories display. I have a general category for equipment, then one of the sub categories is bags and it has 5 sub categories (juniors, cart, stand, etc) and I'm wondering if I can make this page http://pinkgolftees.com/c-33-golf-bags.aspx just show all of the bags and not a list of additional categories. is that possible? if so, how? If not all of the bags, can I at least attach an icon to each of the sub categories so it's not just a list on a white page?
thanks

For category images, you'll want to set AppConfig:ShowSubcatsinGrid=true.

To show all products, you have a couple of options. One is to map the products to the root category as well as the child categories. Another is to modify your XML Package to not show sub categories and list all of the subs products as well. But where do you stop? One level, two levels, etc.? And why have sub cats at all? Maybe it varies on a category by category basis, in which case you can design a couple of different flavors of XML Packages accordingly.

I think the answer to the question here is if you want the root category to show all the products in the subcategories, and not show any of the subcategories, just delete the subcats and map the products to the root

the sub cats are of great value for the menu structure, just not for the display page. the link I provided shows a page that I don't think is much of a sales tool, but I like the menus as-is

Overall I think it's better to get the products in front of customers as soon as possible before they have to click through too many subcategories.

On sites with just a few categories it's not that much of an issue, but a lot of larger ecommerce sites show all the products in the current category and all its descendant categories. So the subcategories act as a filtering mechanism to narrow down the field of products shown.

Take a look at Art.com for example... you get products at the top level. The navigation bar is responsible for showing the subcategories, so why waste space in the main page area for the same thing?

In my experience, less than 5% of visitors even see the home page, let alone enter a site through it. The majority of our traffic enters via "search" to a specific product, and customers usually convert without even visiting "home".

While a good organization in your left-column is important, excellent search capabilities is paramount. Coustomers typically serach for plurals (e.g., "blue widgets", not "blue widget"), misspellings, and unusual word orderings ("widgets that are blue").

thanks for the feedback. While we decide on a better menu structure I've turned the grid on. I'm getting a bunch of no image available icons. where do I set the images for each category under the sub groups?

You specify the image for each entity just like you do for products. Go to the category or section page in admin, and add the pictures on the Images tab.

I agree with pinkgolftees, I too would like my subcat products to show from the root level. As a sub cat on the left bar would be selected, the products on the right would decrease. Most sites use this navigation/filter approach. So no one has a simple solution for this?

If you're talking about the left navigation menu for yoru categories, you can alter the rev.categories.xml.config package to allow a heirarchal category listing, and change the entity.*.xml.config that is displaying on the mainpage by altering the SQL statement to retrieve all products in all categories mapped to the original entityID (as well as those products mapped to the original entityID).

I too wanted this output.

After putting entity.grid.xml.config into debug mode I copied the SQL command into Management Studio and the records returned fine in the results pane.

However, still no luck in ASPDNSF.

So, I figured there has to be a problem with a variable perhaps?

Therefore, since the store proc "GetProducts" has default values, I started with executing just the store proc by itself without params and it worked.

So, I began adding back each parameter, one at a time, until the procedure stopped working correctly. It seems that for some reason, when the procedure is ran from XSLT, the parameter EntityName isn't liked at all. So I commented that one parameter out and everything works!

Here's the final query (notice the comment out):

Code:

    <query name="Products" rowElementName="Product">
        <sql>
            <![CDATA[
                exec dbo.aspdnsf_GetProducts 
                    @categoryID = @CatID,
                    @sectionID = @SecID ,
                    @manufacturerID = @ManID,
                    @distributorID = @DistID,
                    @genreID = @GenreID,
                    @vectorID = @VectorID,
                    @localeName = @locale,
                    @CustomerLevelID = @CustLevelID,
                    @affiliateID = @AffID,
                    @ProductTypeID = @ProdTypeID, 
                    @ViewType = 1,
                    @pagenum = 1,
                    @pagesize = null,
                    @StatsFirst = 0,
                    @publishedonly = 1,
                    @ExcludePacks = 0,
                    @ExcludeKits = 0,
                    @ExcludeSysProds = 0,
                    @InventoryFilter = @InvFilter,
                    /*@sortEntityName = @entityname,*/
                    @storeID = @StoreID,
                    @filterProduct = @FilterProduct
            ]]>
        </sql>
        <queryparam paramname="@CatID"          paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="CatID"                                         sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@SecID"          paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="SecID"                                         sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@ManID"          paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="ManID"                                         sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@DistID"         paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="DistID"                                        sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@GenreID"        paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="GenreID"                                       sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@VectorID"       paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="VectorID"                                      sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@locale"         paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="LocaleSetting"                                 sqlDataType="varchar" defvalue="en-US"  validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@CustLevelID"    paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="CustomerLevelID"                               sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@AffID"          paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="AffiliateID"                                   sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@ProdTypeID"     paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="ProductTypeFilterID"                           sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="1"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@pgnum"          paramtype="request"   requestparamname="pagenum"                                       sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="1"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@InvFilter"      paramtype="appconfig" requestparamname="HideProductsWithLessThanThisInventoryLevel"    sqlDataType="int"     defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@entityname"     paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="EntityName"                                    sqlDataType="varchar" defvalue=""       validationpattern="" />
		    <queryparam paramname="@StoreID"	      paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="StoreID"										                   sqlDataType="int"	   defvalue="1"      validationpattern="" />
        <queryparam paramname="@FilterProduct"  paramtype="runtime"   requestparamname="FilterProduct"										             sqlDataType="bit"	   defvalue="0"      validationpattern="" />
    </query>

I'm not sure if this is a bug, but someone at ASPDNSF may want to check on this.