Setting Up Your Catalog
Figure 60. Categories and Subcategories
Step 3: Creating Attributes, page 73. Next, you can create the attributes that represent a
product’s characteristics. Attributes are a powerful Magento concept to make finding and comparing products easier.
Step 4: Creating Attribute Sets, page 76. Attribute sets are logical groups of attributes that
simplify the process of assigning attributes to a product. They do not appear in the frontend.
o Creating a New Attribute Group, page 78. Part of the process of creating an
attribute set is to create attribute groups. These groups determine how attributes appear in the backend when defining a product.
Step 5: Creating a New Product, page 80. This step shows how to fill in product information
in order to maximize conversion and how to assign Categories to help customers navigate to the products of interest to them. Attribute sets and attributes are assigned to products to describe them, provide multiple options and help the customer search through the product list.
5.2 Setting Up Catalog Defaults
The first step to creating your catalog is to configure the catalog system default settings. In many cases, these settings can be overridden at lower levels (such as in individual categories and products).
To configure catalog defaults:
In the Admin Panel, select System > Configuration > CATALOG > Catalog. In the Current
Configuration Scope drop-down menu, select the scope of this configuration. The following describes some of the more important sections in the page.
Frontend
This section determines how your products are shown on the frontend catalog pages. See Figure 61.
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Setting Up Your Catalog
Figure 61. Catalog Frontend Configuration
List Mode o Grid Only: The products are displayed only in a grid structure. o List Only: The products are displayed only in a list. o Grid (Default)/List: The products are displayed in a grid structure by default, but your customers are able to switch to list. o List (Default)/Grid: The products are displayed in a list structure by default, but your customers are able to switch to grid.
Products per Page: For each display type (List and Grid), do the following: o Specify, in a comma-separated list, what the options are for the number of products to display on a product page. These options will be listed in a drop-down menu on the frontend. o Specify how many products are displayed on a page by default.
Allow All Products per Page: Select whether the customers are allowed to display all products on a single category page.
Product Listing Sort By: The products are sorted, by default, by the selected attribute. The
Best Value products are featured products as determined by the store administrator; for
more information, see “Creating Categories,” page 63. The customer can select from the
other options on a per-page basis.
You can configure attributes to be used for sorting using the Used for Sorting in Product
Listing setting of an attribute. For details, see “Managing Product Attributes,” page 72.
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Setting Up Your Catalog
Use Flat Catalog Category: Selecting Yes “flattens” multiple category database tables into a single table for increased performance on the frontend. Magento recommends selecting Yes for any size catalog.
Use Flat Catalog Product: Selecting Yes “flattens” multiple product database tables into a single table for increased performance on the frontend. Magento recommends selecting Yes if your catalog contains more than 1,000 SKUs.
Allow Dynamic Media URLs in Products and Categories: Selecting No can improve performance.
Sitemap
This section determines how your site map is displayed to customers.
Use Tree Like Category Sitemap: Selecting Yes displays the site map as a tree, showing all categories and subcategories as branches. Selecting No displays the categories and subcategories in a single column.
Minimum Lines per Page: Determines the number of lines on each page when the site map is distributed among several pages.
Product Reviews
This section enables unregistered guests in your store to write product reviews.
Product Alerts
You can enable your customers to subscribe to two types of customer alerts by email: price change alerts and in-stock alerts. For each alert type, choose whether to enable users to subscribe to it, and select the email template to use. Also, select a sender display name, which applies to both alert
types (see Figure 62). For more information on how to configure email templates and email sender
addresses, see “Customizing Transactional Emails,” page 156.
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Figure 62. Product Alerts Configuration
The price change alert creates a Sign up for price alert link in every product page. Clicking this link subscribes your customers to this alert for that particular product so that they receive an email each time the product price is changed. This includes adding or changing Special Prices in addition to the regular Price field.
Setting Up Your Catalog
The in-stock alert creates a link called Sign up to get notified when this product is back in stock in every Out of Stock product. Clicking this link subscribes your customer to this alert so that they receive an email when the product status changes to In Stock.
For each product, there is a tab listing all the customers subscribed to either of these alerts.
Product Alerts Run Settings
These settings enable you to select how often Magento checks for changes that require alerts to be sent. Additionally, you can select the recipient, sender, and template for emails that are sent if the sending of alerts fails.
Frequency: Choose how often product alerts are sent out: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
Start Time: Choose what time of day the product alert process starts. This time should be after any price or inventory updates are performed.
Error Email Recipient: Identify the email address of the person (normally a store administrator) who should receive an email notification when there is an error in the product alert process.
Error Email Sender: Select the role that the email will be “from.”
Error Email Template: Select the email template to use for product alert error notifications.
For more information, see “Customizing Transactional Emails,” page 156.
Product Image Placeholders
This section enables you to specify an image for each of the sizes that are used instead of the product image, if it is missing.
Recently Viewed/Compared Products
This feature is described in detail in “Recently Viewed,” page 15. The configuration section enables
you to specify how many products are shown by default in each list. See Figure 63.
Figure 63. Recently Viewed/Compared Products Settings
Price
The Price section contains only the Catalog Price Scope drop-down menu, in which you can select the scope of the base currency (Global or Website).
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Setting Up Your Catalog
Layered Navigation
The Layered Navigation section enables you to choose whether the price ranges that are displayed in the layered navigation tool are calculated automatically or manually. If you select Manual, the
Default Price Navigation Step field becomes visible, enabling you to specify the default size of the price ranges.
Category Top Navigation
The Category Top Navigation section enables you to define how many levels of subcategories are displayed by clicking on a category in the top navigation bar on the frontend. Setting this value to 0
(zero) enables all levels to be displayed. If you have a large number of subcategory levels, this can potentially make it difficult for the user to navigate.
Search Engine Optimizations
In order to make your site more search engine friendly, configure the following parameters, as
shown in Figure 64:
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Figure 64. Search Engine Optimization Settings
Auto generated Site Map: Enable this feature to display a Site Map link in the footer of the frontend pages. This enables a customer to view an automatically generated site map including a list of all of your existing categories. In addition to the auto-generated site map,
Magento enables integration with Google Sitemap. More information is provided on the following pages.
Popular Search Terms: Enable this feature to display a Search Terms link in the footer of the frontend pages. This enables customers to link to a list of all search terms. This is an SEO feature because each of these search terms counts as a link to your site and is explored by search engines to discover content on your site.
Setting Up Your Catalog
Product URL Suffix and Category URL Suffix: These options determine which suffix is displayed on each product and category page. Typically this value will be .html or .htm.
When you change this value (and click Save Config), you must perform a cache refresh by selecting System > Cache Management and clicking Flush Magento Cache.
Use Categories Path for Product URLs: This option determines how the URL is composed.
Select Yes to specify that the URL links for products include the associated category and a separate link is generated for each associated category. Select No to specify that the URL rewrites include only the product name and that there is only one link for each product, regardless of how many categories the product is associated with.
Create Permanent Redirect for old URLs if URL key changed: Selecting Yes automatically creates a redirect for the old URL that points to the new URL if a page is moved. Doing so eliminates the “404 Not Found” error message that customers see if a page they had bookmarked is moved.
Page Title Separator: Specify a character to replace the space character ( ) with when the system uses the page title to construct the page’s URL. Typically you would use an underscore (_) or hyphen (-).
Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories and Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For
Products: Select whether to add a tag to each category or product page that points to a
“preferred” URL for search engines to index when encountering pages that contain the same content (but which may be sorted differently, for instance).
Catalog Search
The options in this section define how the catalog search feature behaves.
Minimal Query Length: Defines the minimum number of characters that the customer must specify in the Search field on the frontend.
Maximum Query Length: Defines the maximum number of characters that the customer may specify in the Search field.
Maximum Query Words Count: Define the maximum number of terms that can be specified in the Search field. This limit applies to the “Like" search type only.
Search Type: Define the type of search that is performed: o Like: Includes only results that are close in spelling to the specified search terms. o Fulltext: Includes only results that exactly match the specified search terms. o Combine (Like and Fulltext): Includes both exact matches and close matches.
Apply Layered Navigation if Search Results are Less Than: Defines the maximum number of results for which layered navigation can be applied. If the number of results is more than this number, then the results are presented as a simple list. If you specify 0, then layered navigation is always applied. Limiting the number of results can increase performance.
Downloadable Products Options
This section controls the settings for products of Downloadable type. The most important settings
are the following, as shown in Figure 65:
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Setting Up Your Catalog
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Figure 65. Downloadable Products Options
Order Item Status to Enable Downloads: Controls whether customers can access their downloadable product links immediately after the order is placed or only after the invoice is created for the order.
Default Maximum Number of Downloads: Controls how many times a downloadable product may be downloaded by the customer after it has been purchased.
Shareable: Setting this option to Yes enables non-registered customers (guest customers) to access their downloads. This is the only option for customers to access their products if you want to offer guest checkout or quick checkout methods, such as PayPal Express or Google
Checkout. This setting can be overridden at the product level.
Default Sample Title and Default Link Title: These settings control what is displayed throughout the store when referring to samples and downloadable products (links).
Open Links in New Window: Controls whether the download page opens in a new window.
Use Content-Disposition: Controls whether the content is opened in a browser window or downloaded.
Disable Guest Checkout if Cart Contains Downloadable Items: This setting disables the
Guest Checkout option only if there are downloadable items in a cart, and leaves it enabled if a customer is purchasing other products. If you set this option to Yes, be sure to set the
Shareable option to Yes as well.
Date and Time Custom Options
The options in this section control how dates and times are displayed in your store.
Use JavaScript Calendar: Enables your store to present a JavaScript-powered calendar date picker in any field that requires the customer to select a date. When this option is set to No, then drop-down menus are provided to select the date and time.
Date Fields Order and Time Format: Select the order in which the day, month, and year values are presented in the format xx/yy/zz., and select a 12-hour (a.m./p.m.) or 24-hour time format. These fields are important for store views that are targeted for specific countries that use date and time formats that are different from your local custom.
Setting Up Your Catalog
Year Range: Indicate the range of years that is available for selection in either the JavaScript calendar or calendar drop-down menus. Use a four-digit year format.
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Product Categories and Product Attributes
6 Product Categories and Product Attributes
6.1 Managing Categories
This section describes how to display, create, and edit categories and subcategories.
The products in the web store are grouped into categories. Categories enable you to give your store structure and form. In Magento, each store you create is assigned to a unique category. Any other category that you want to use in your store must be created as a subcategory. All categories are technically considered subcategories because you are placing them under the root category. See
Figure 66.
Apparel Store
Root Category
Shoes
Category
Clothes
Category
Men
Category
Women
Category
Men
Category
Women
Category
Figure 66. Example Category Structure
The way category names are displayed on the frontend depends on the layout. If the default theme is used for the web store, categories are shown in a bar near the top of the store web page.
Each product can be assigned to one or more categories, as described in “Finding the Right
Products,” page 8.
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