Shop by Category and Brand

Hi all,



I’ve been looking at other posts but can’t seem to solve my problem. I am trying to pull off a “Shop by category” and a “Shop by brand” block. We are working with tools, for example. A user may want to search by “Dewalt->Cordless->Drills” or they may want to go through the other block and drill down by “Drills->Cordless->Dewalt”. This would be easy if each category could have two parents. Unfortunately, the second category “Cordless” is actually 2 separate categories in CS-Cart. So when I add an item, if I want it to show up in multiple categories, I have to actually stick it in multiple categories.



I think what I want is what I’ve seen referred to as “Product Filters”. I can’t seem to make this work though. I create a product filter named “Dewalt” and I set the block to:



Content: Product filters

Filling: filters

Appearance: blocks/product_filters_extended.tpl

Wrapper: blocks/wrappers/sidebox_important.tpl



But nothing every shows up. I have one product filter called “Dewalt” and it includes the category dewalt (which has items in it). But still nothing shows up.



Can someone please maybe clear up my understanding about how you would use the product filter to create a “Shop by brand” block?



Maybe I’m not clear and if so, please feel free to ask me to try to reword this. It seems like this is a common request however, so it’d be nice to see an example in the FAQ’s.

Have you set the manufacturer for each product? Also, make sure you have a Manufacturer filter set up in Catalog->Product filters. You can then a new block as follows:



Name: Shop by Brand

Block content: Product filters

Filling: Filters

Show: Manufacturer (you may need to click the ‘Specific setting’ link)

Set the rest of the settings as desired.



Bob

I have yet to even find the word “Manufacturer” listed anywhere in CS-Cart. Can you tell me where this is?

Do you have a product feature for manufacturer set up? If not, create it:



Name: Manufacturer

Type: Extended

Group (optional): set this if you want this grouped with other features when displayed

Check if you want the features to display on product, catalog (listing) or both types of pages



Click the variants tab and add you manufacturers.



You can then use this feature in creating a Manufacturer product filter by specifying the ‘Filter by’ to be Manufacturer.



Bob

Do I have to set up Manfacturer as a prodcut feature? And once I’ve done that, do I need to create variants and make each variant the different manfacturer names (i.e. Dewalt, Makita, etc). Or do I have to go back to each item after creating the Manufacturer feature and edit them to put them into the the Feature (this doesn’t even sound right I know, but there should be a Manufacturer field for ALL items NATIVE to cs-cart).



Is CS-Cart assuming that all it’s customers ARE the manufacturer of it’s products?

Ha, didn’t expect your answers so fast. Thanks a million. I created the feature, filled out the variants, and then created the product filter. I did not touch the category tabs in either places, but maybe I should have. I went and added a block as you said above, and it shows:



Content: Product filters

Filling: filters

Appearance: blocks/product_filters_extended.tpl

Wrapper: blocks/wrappers/sidebox_important.tpl

Active.



But nothing shows on the page. I guess the part I’m not understanding is after I’ve created these filters, how do I select which products belong to the feature (the specific variant / manufacturer name).?

By nothing showing on the page, I literally mean the block doesn’t even appear on the live site, but it’s there on the design page (indicatave, I guess, that since the list size = 0, it just doesn’t show).

Sorry, ignore the last post. Duh!! Yeah I have to go back now and add the feature to the items, and a miracle: it shows up. However, What if I want them to drill down a bit further than by manufactuer? For instance, Manufacturer Name-> Drills, etc. As it is, I only have one level of search with Manufacturer right? Do you understand what I’m asking? This is the last “gray area” of cs-cart for me, so once again, many many thanks.

Hmm… When I edit all of the dewalt items to have the “Dewalt” feature, now when I click on the “Shop by Manufacturer” → Dewalt link, it shows me ALL of the Dewalt items. How do I get it to filter and show only the dewalt items that are in the currently selected category? My category block looks like:

Content: Categories



Filling: manually



Appearance: blocks/categories_text_links.tpl



Wrapper: blocks/wrappers/sidebox_important.tpl

I answered my own question. Because it needs to be dynamic.

I think your main problem is that you have your filling set to manually and it needs to be set to dynamic.



I had issues with this for quite a while to. Here are my settings. I am a visual kind of guy so these are all screen shots.



First set up a feature. I put mine in a group. I don’t really know if it needs to be:







For this feature I used these settings:







Next set up a filter:







Now set up a block in the categories part of the block section:







Continued on next post…

Now set up the block:







Just ignore the wrapper setting. I have set up my own custom wrappers.



I hope this helps,



Brandon

Dang, all that work and in the mean time you figured it out on your own. Good for you.



Anyways, maybe my post will help someone else.



Brandon

Brandon-



I am sure your post will help someone in the future (those industrious souls who use the forum search feature).





dime-



Glad you go this sorted.



I know the documentation is not as good as it should be and, of course, many are happy to help in the forums. But sometimes, the best solution is just to play around a bit after getting that initial input.



Bob

Thanks again guys. I was so frustrated, I was tempted to move to another platform. But this is a really well thought out cart. Great software.



Cheers.

Hello Friends, I want to Make Shop By Category Filter in Product Listing Page. Anyone Help me?

Hello Friends, I want to Make Shop By Category Filter in Product Listing Page. Anyone Help me?

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Hello Friends, I want to Make Shop By Category Filter in Product Listing Page. Anyone Help me?

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