Product Categories & Tags

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Product categories (groups) and tags (keywords for the Tag Cloud) are imported from the <PRODUCTGROUPS> section of the products.xml. Once the categories are imported from the products.xml file, they can be edited in the OpenCart Administration.

sign_warningWhen you need to reorganize you products in new categories, the old categories are not deleted during a new products.xml import. Read here how to manually delete categories from the mySQL database.

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Changing Category Images

One of the product-relevant options that can be changed through the OpenCart Administration are the product Category Images, as these generally need to be bigger than the ones displayed in the 3P Publisher product wizard.

 

To the right you see a category with it's imported data and the manually changed category image. All other options like product Filters are automatically imported from the products.xml file.

 

Below you see an example of the products.xml category section with 3 product categories (groups) and the ImageFile which is displayed in the Publisher Product Wizard:

 

  <PRODUCTGROUPS>

    <GROUP id="dm012">

      <Name>Softcover Books</Name>

      <ImageFile>images\PngSoftCover.png</ImageFile>

     <Tags>Photo Albums, Casting Albums, Holiday Albums</Tags>

    </GROUP>

    <GROUP id="dm015">

      <Name>Linen &amp; Leather</Name>

      <ImageFile>images\PngFullbound.png</ImageFile>

     <Tags>Wedding Books, Yearbooks, Art Guide, Photo Albums, ...</Tags>

    </GROUP>

    <GROUP id="dm013">

      <Name>Wired Scrapbooks</Name>

      <ImageFile>images\PngWireO.png</ImageFile>

     <Tags>Scrapbooks, Manuals, Scripts, Real Estate Catalogs, ...</Tags>

    </GROUP>

  </PRODUCTGROUPS>

 

You can now assign a different category image (as displayed to the left) which will be shown in the OpenCart Storefront. It will not be overwritten next time you import a newer products.xml.

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Adding Subcategories

Since the storefront menu bar, which lists the product groups, is currently limited to one line (all template extensions also rely on one menu line only), we have to use a trick to display more category items. OpenCart allows for subcategories, so we can define a More... menu item in Administration > Catalog > Categories, and give this item a sort order of 99, meaning it will allways show at the rightmost position.

Menu items (Calendars & Posters in the example to the left) that should be listed below this can now be assigned a parent category. In the Parent field of each category, type More and select the parent from the list.

lightbulb_onIf you're only missing a few pixels and don't want to bother creating subcategories, you could alternatively reduce the font of the categories in order to make them fit. Open catalog/view/theme/aquacart/stylesheet/stylesheet.css and look for (replace AquaCart with whatever template you are using):

#menu a{

 font-size: 16px;        

}

 
In the screenshot below you see how the More... parent section appears in the storefront.

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Tag (Keyword) Cloud

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The tag cloud displayed in the starting page of the OpenCart shop is generated from the Tags option in the products.xml file (see example above).

The size of the tags is currently random - every time the page refreshes different tags are promoted by an increased size. At a later stage of development, we may add the following options:

The more often a certain tag appears in a category (product group) , the larger it is displayed in the cloud.
The more often a certain book is ordered, the larger the tag is displayed in the cloud.

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