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In today’s lesson we are going to be covering how to edit, delete and add categories. The first thing to do is to log in to your website by typing in http://yourwebsitename.com/admin. Put in your username and password. After you have logged in, we need to navigate to the categories option.

Creating a Category:

Hover over Catalog and select categories. It’s best to start with the categories because this is an outline for what kind of products you will be carrying on your store.

The first thing you should focus on is how to create a category. You do this by clicking the insert button in the top right hand corner. Now that you have started the category creation put in a category name. For this example I am going to use ‘microphone’. Meta tag description and Meta tag keywords fields is for search engine optimization purposes. You may put in any description of the category you’d like here and any keywords you would like to associate with that category. As far as the actual description goes, it is completely optional. A category in of itself should be self-descriptive; however, feel free to place a description in here.
The next step is to select the Data Tab.

Data Tab:

Parent Category-

After clicking the data tab, the first option you are presented with is the Parent Category field. Since I want to create ‘Microphone’ as a Parent Category, I do so by leaving it at ‘none’.

SEO Keyword-

The SEO keyword field generally uses the name of the actual product. You may add additional keywords to this if you like.

There are three rules to the SEO Keyword field:

-The first rule is the SEO Keyword must be globally unique; meaning you cannot use the word ‘microphone’ in any other SEO Keyword area or it will create a conflict with the backend of the site.

-The second rule is no special characters. Alpha Numeric characters only. So if you happen to have any ‘special’ characters in this field, remove them.

-The third rule is no spaces. They must be replaced with dashes or underscores. So if you have a SEO Keyword that has two words or more in it; you’d simply replace the space with a dash or an underscore. And again feel free to add as many SEO Keywords as applicable to the name of this category.

Image-

To upload an image to represent your category simply select the Browse Files button below. This will bring open your image manager. Now to upload an image to your image manager, simply select the upload button. Once you do that, it will bring open your computer’s browser window asking you to direct it to where the image is. The image I am choosing is ‘vintage microphone.jpg’. Double click on the image to select it and you will be greeted with a success message. Once you have downloaded the image, you must find it. Everything listed here is listed alphabetically so I know it is going to be at the bottom. So I find my ‘vintage microphone’ and again I double click it. Once I do that the image appears on the product page, verifying that I have indeed uploaded the correct image.

Top-

Top refers to displaying Categories in the top menu bar. If you are using a horizontal navigation style, then you will want to select this option. If you only have a left side navigation it is not necessary to check this box.

Columns-

This is the number of columns used to display the sub-categories. If you have a large number of sub-categories, you need to tell it how many columns you would like those sub-categories to be displayed in. This keeps the columns from running too deep into the page. For these purposes, one will be sufficient.

Sort Order-

Always leave at default.

Status-

Enabled or disabled are the only two options. Enabled means you would like this category to be instantly seen on the webpage. Disabled means you would like to hide it until you are ready to display this on you webpage.

Save-

Click on the blue pill shaped button in the top right hand corner to save. Once you have saved, you will be greeted with a success message.

Sub-Category / Child-Category-

The next step if necessary is to create a child category. Just like before we start with the insert button and create a child-category name. For this example, I will use ‘In Line Microphones’. Follow the same procedure as before with the Meta Tag Description, any appropriate Meta Tag Keywords, and a description if necessary.

Data Tab:

Parent Category-

I need to assign ‘In Line Microphones’ to be a child-category of ‘Microphones’. I can do this by selecting the dropdown menu and selecting ‘Microphones’ from the drop down list.

From this point on, the process follows the same procedure as outlined when creating the Parent Category.
Let’s save this and take a look at our work.

Store Front-

After saving, I will click on the ‘Store Front’ button in the top right hand corner which will allow me to see my store from the customer’s point of view. If you do this and no changes appear, be sure to refresh your browser in order for it to show the updated information.

Deleting Categories:

The next thing to understand about categories is how to delete categories. It’s very simple. If you do not need a particular category, check the box for the category you no longer need, come back up to the top right hand side and click on the delete button.It’s going to ask you, “Are you sure you want to do this? This cannot be undone!”, if you’re sure go ahead and hit ok. This will also trigger a success message stating that you have modified your categories with a green background.

Edit a Category:

If an edit is necessary on a particular category, simply find the category you are looking for and select the corresponding edit button. Once in here you may make any changes you may need. If you forgot to assign the right category, if you have an invalid character in your SEO Keyword, if you forgot to upload an image, if it’s not displaying in your top level navigation, you had it disabled and now you want it enable it, etc.

Description Field-

In my case, I forgot to put in a description. This is an excellent time to talk about the description box. The description box is a WYSIWYG. A WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. It’s much like using a word editor. Within this program it will allow me to format my text anyway I’d like. If I wanted to bold and italicize the headline for dramatic effect, it’s as simple as highlighting the phrase and selecting the Bold and Italics button. Same procedure for if I had a list that I would like to make into bullet points. I can simply highlight the list and select the Bullet Points button. You may also change the color of the background, the color of the font, of course the size of the font, the font type, left justified, center, right justified, etc. This is just a small sampling of what you would find in a basic word editor.

Once you have completed your changes, go ahead and hit save. Again you will receive a success notification saying that you have modified your category. After checking the storefront, I can see the changes I made show up here on the website.

Well that is all for today’s lesson in adding, editing, and deleting categories in the backend of the Ares Cart system. The next lesson we will be discussing will be the beginner tutorial on how to upload, edit and add products to the backend of your website.

For more tutorials and information, please visit http://ecommercepositioning.com/2011/support.

Thank you for reading!