Product Organization
Categories
Categories are the best way to group products together. Add as many products to a category as you like, and create as many categories as you need. Display them on your main WordPress menu, in sidebars, or link to them anywhere — a simple but powerful way to keep your store organized.
Watch the Categories Walkthrough
See how to create product categories and use them across menus, banners, and imagery.
Creating Product Categories
Organize your products into segments and categories easily in EasyCart. Add categories to menus, banners, imagery, and other areas of your store.
Concepts
How categories are used
Start by creating a category and giving it a name. Featured categories appear above your store if you turn on the “show featured categories” setting in product settings. Parent categories let you organize categories into sub-categories (another common approach is the menu system, nesting children under one another for display). Priority settings let you rank categories — priority 1 shows ahead of priority 5 — so you control their order in shortcode displays.
For example: a main group called “Clothing,” then “Women’s Clothing,” then “Women’s Tops,” and so on — then display that hierarchy on menus, sidebars, and wherever you like.
Category hierarchy display
Reference
Adding & editing categories
Categories live under WP EasyCart › Products › Categories. Click “Add New,” or edit by clicking the pencil icon or the category title. Each category offers these fields:
- Is Category Active — enable or disable the category in your store.
- Is Featured Category — highlighted by shortcodes and store settings.
- Category Name — the title shown in your store.
- Priority — a whole number for default sort order; you can also drag and drop.
- Link Slug — the URL slug for SEO; lowercase, numbers, and dashes only, and must be unique.
- Parent Category — organize display with parent and child categories.
- Banner Image — displayed above products and in the featured-category display.
- Short Description — used for SEO.
- Post Excerpt — used for SEO.
- Post Featured Image — often shown in search results (theme dependent) and for SEO.
You can deactivate or activate a category anytime by clicking the eye icon in its row, or by setting it while editing the category itself.
WP EasyCart — Categories list
Workflow
Managing products in a category
From the categories list, open a category’s products by hovering its title and clicking the edit-product-list link, or the outbound-arrow icon on the right. You’ll land on “manage products for ‘[category]’,” where you can add new products or remove existing ones — use bulk actions to delete several at once.
Manage products for a category
When viewing the full product list, use the checkboxes to select products, then use Bulk Actions to add them to the category in bulk.
Bulk-adding products to a category
Adding a category to a product
You can also work the other direction. Go to WP EasyCart › Products, edit a product, scroll to the categories section, and add categories to that product one at a time.
Adding categories on a product
Setting category sort order
With 500 or fewer categories, drag and drop them on the Products › Categories panel — hover a row, then click and drag it into place. Be sure to click Save Sort when you’re done. You can also set sort order by editing a category and entering a value; lower numbers appear first.
Drag-and-drop category sort order
Power Feature
Creating complex category filters
Once you see that a category is simply a group of products, you can build powerful sidebar filter systems. It’s a bit hidden, but it lets shoppers multi-select category filters and narrow products on the fly. The structure has three levels:
- Top-level category — a category with no parent. It does nothing on its own; it just designates everything beneath it as part of the filter system. You’ll select it later in settings. Name it something like “sidebar filter menu.”
- Second-level headings — the menu headings on your sidebar (e.g. Men, Women, Children). Set the top-level category as their parent. These can also contain all the products that fall under them.
- Third-level filters — the selectable checkbox filters under each heading (e.g. under Women’s: Shirts, Coats, Suits). Make each one a child of its second-level heading, and apply the relevant products to it.
Top-level category — no parent
Second & third level categories
Storefront — sidebar headings
Storefront — third-level filters
Multi-select filter results
Engaging the complex category filters
Finally, tell EasyCart which category represents your filter tree. Go to WP EasyCart › Settings › Products, turn ON the store sidebar, engage the Complex Category Filters system, and choose the top-level category you created. That’s it — your filterable sidebar is live.
Complex category filter setting
Organize your store with categories
Group products, build hierarchies, and create powerful sidebar filters — all with EasyCart categories.