Setting Up WooCommerce Product Categories
In the first couple UploadWP.com tutorials we covered the basic settings for the WooCommerce plugin and the WooStore theme. Moving forward with our series on how to build an eCommerce site using WordPress, WooCommerce and the WooStore theme we’re now going to show you how to setup your WooStore Product Categories. The most part of this step is deciding how you want your eCommerce site product category structure to setup. You’ll find that the actual setup of the product categories is simple.
Give Much Thought to Your Product Category Structure
Before we can begin adding products to our new eCommerce site we must first setup the product categories. It’s very important to take time to really think about how best to structure your product category setup so that it makes the most sense for your eCommerce site. Once your categories are setup and you have products live on the site it is very difficult to go back and modify the category hierarchy. So I really need to stress the importance of thinking thro
ugh your product category pyramid before actually creating it.
Personally, I like to map out the product category structure on paper so that I can see it before creating it. Visually seeing it on paper allows me to take a step back and decide if it really makes sense for the long run. This exercise also allows me to see if it’s built to scale so that the site can grow to it’s full potential.
Determining your high level categories is most important because you can always add “child categories” later if you need to drill down and get more specific. For your high level categories you should be as broad as possible. Creating far reaching top level categories will allow the site to grow to scale.
How to Create Your WooStore Product Categories
In the WooCommerce tutorial video below, I choose to setup the top level product categories for WorldCupTees.com by teams that participate in the World Cup of soccer. For example, the first three product categories that I setup were Team USA, Team Brazil, and Team Italy. Structuring the high level product categories by team gave me the greatest amount of flexibility with my category structure going forward. As the site grows and more products are added, I can always drill down and add sub-categories if needed. In the beginning however, I like to keep the high level product categories as general as possible.
Creating Product Categories in the WordPress admin
After you’ve decided on your WooStore product category hierarchy, log into the WordPress admin and go to: Products > Product Categories > enter your product category name in the “Name” field > enter the Slug (all lower case with dash between each word) > upload a product category image (this is optional but highly recommended) > click “Add New Product Category” > repeat this process for each of your high level categories as demonstrated in the WooCommerce Product Category tutorial video below…
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Article by Teddy Triton
I'm a blogger and the founder of UploadWP.com. Upload WP was originally created as a training tool for my Flippa.com clients. Having bought and sold a large number of WordPress sites on Flippa, I needed an effective and efficient way to teach people how to make updates to their new sites. Upload WP was the answer and the site has since grown into a leading WordPress Tutorials destination. I enjoy helping people solve their WordPress related issues. If you have any questions or a WP issues that you need help with, please leave a comment below and we'll do our best to help.
Adam has written 100 awesome articles for us at Upload WordPress
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
hi,
I’m a unlocker just need to setup a wordpress website and i couldn’t figure out y there are 2 home pages in the woostore and if you can help me with setting up my unlock store it would be a great help.
Thanks in advance
Hi Hisham – You can control the layout of the WooStore home page via the WooStore Theme Options settings in the WordPress admin. Go to WooStore > Theme Options > and in the Homepage Content drop down you have the option of selecting a page or blog post to display on the home page below the featured image slider. Also, you have the option of Disabling the Homepage content section. On the demo site (WorldCupTees.com) used in our tutorial videos, we chose to Disable the Homepage Content section so that just our featured image slider and products display on the home page. My recommendation is to play around with the WooStore Homepage Layout settings until you get the layout that you’re looking for. Below is a screen capture of how we have the WooStore Homepage Layout setup for the demo site, WorldCupTees.com…
Please let me know if this helps. Thanks for your support!
Adam
UploadWP.com
You are simply amazing, keep up the good job.
I have indeed benefited from and I do not need anyone to tell me that you are an expert in web site creation.
I need your help on WooCommerce Currency editing and adding of new currency.
Please, my country’s currency is not reflected and I am buying an online store, specifically for my country.
Your kind help will be appreciated please.
Thanks in advance
Hi Eric – Thanks for the positive feedback and I’m glad to hear that these WooCommerce tutorials have been helpful. If your Country’s currency is not among the list of available currencies then you’ll have to look into using one of the WooCommerce Payment Gateway Extensions. You’ll find the list of available currencies in the WordPress admin by going to WooCommerce > Settings > click on the General tab > and you’ll see the “Currency” drop-down. To the best of my knowledge, the currencies available for use in WooCommerce out of the box, is based on PayPal’s supported currency list. So if your Country’s currency is not supported by PayPal then you’ll have to look into using a payment / currency extension. My recommendation is to do a Google search for “WooCommerce Extensions” and there is a good chance you’ll find an extension that will support your Country’s currency.
Thanks again for your support and best of luck with your site!
Adam
Hi, is there any way to remove or change the “Product Categories” title via css/php or something? the same for “SKU” label? thanks
Hi Manuel,
You can change the Product Categories title via the Widgets section in your WordPress admin. In your WP admin go to Appearance > Widgets > open the WooCommerce Product Categories widget > give it a new title > save changes
Here’s how to remove the SKU label in the WordPress admin… Go to WooCommerce > Settings > scroll down to Product Data > Product fields > un-check the “Enable the SKU field for product” check box > save changes and the SKU label will no longer show up on your site.
Please let me know if this helps answer your questions and best of luck with your site.
Adam
how to get product list according to category in woocommerce? is there any function inside woocommerce to get category or to make query for fetching product according to category id.
Hi Adam and Teddy,
Love this site and thanks for the great info as always! This is my first time posting a question to you as I’m totally stuck! :0
I was wondering if you knew of a bug with the WooCommerce plugin that fails to show Product Categories after adding them via Products>Categories. The product categories are not showing up under Appearance>Menus in order to add them so that they show up in the navigation for the site.
This has happened to me before while designing another website using the free WooCommerce Artificer theme and WooCommerce plug-in and somehow fixed the issue but for the life of me, cannot figure out what I did. I’m also reading about other people on other forums having the same issue but with other themes.
I would greatly appreciate any light you can shed on this problem. I figured you would know how to fix it.
Thanks in advance!
Actually, I just found the answer to the question I had. Thanks!
Hi Julia,
Would be great if you could share the answer! I have been googling this one for a while!
hello..
got this problem .. added a new category (shoes) then a new product. put the new product in the shoes cat. if i click on the productspage the product displays wthout a problem but if i click on the breadcrumb nav above the item i get a empty site .. “products not found” … shouldnt here display the products from the “shoes” category ?
thanks
alexc
Hi, I’ve created a new category but it doesn´t show at the site. In fact I have more categories but I can not add new ones Please help me.
Thanks and regards.
Francisco
Hi Francisco – Complements on your site, it’s very well done from a “look and feel” perspective. Have you solved the issues of categories not showing up on the site? If not let me know and we’ll take a closer look.
I am having the same problem. I added products but its not showing up on the pages. Also my pages are linking properly where it says shop-shoes-heels the other pages says shop-wedges, shop-flats, etc. Please help. I cant open until I fix this problem.
Hi Tashea,
Please be more specific / provide more info in terms of the issue with products not showing on pages. I went to your site, msheaboutique.com, and went to the Shop page and it appeared to be working properly. So if you can be more specific in terms of the exact issue it will help us try and figure out the solution. Thanks,
Adam
Hello
I first want to thank you so much for creating these easy to follow tutorials for woocommerce. they are awesome!! I am completely new to woocommerce and my current website is under a very old format/design which is why I am updating it now
I do have 2 questions I am hoping you can help me with….I have the Artificer theme installed. I followed the video on this page, but there is something that seems off to me and I cannot correct it. I am having no problem creating categories, however, I would like my products and categories to be a page/tab/link along the top menu bar. Is there a way to set this up? Here is an example website (a friend of mine) so you can see what I am trying to do: http://larryelmore.com/store/color-prints-2
He uses wordpress and has a tab along the top menu bar titled “store” with drop down menu and subcategories. when you click on the subcategory it brings you to the page where he sells his items. this is how I would like to set up my menu bar since my site will have other pages that will not be selling items.
Also, in one of your videos you mentioned that you would list on this website the sizes that you recommend for the logo and fiver logo, but I cannot seem to find it, can you please direct me or let me know what sizes you recommend?
thank you
Hi Deanna,
Thanks for the positive feedback! I took a look at both of your sites (old and new) and have to say that I really like your art work! You bring up 2 very good questions and I’ll do my best to answer them both now…
Question 1: I would like my products and categories to be a page/tab/link along the top menu bar. Is there a way to set this up?
My Response / Answer: For the demo site in this example I’m using the Mystile theme (another free woocommerce specific theme) and you can go to ClottingFactors.org to reference the demo site. I’m guessing that the Artificer theme should support up to 2 custom Menus just like the Mystile theme does. So, you’ll want to use one of the Custom Menus to setup your top / main navigation.
To customize your site’s main navigation you’ll want to do the following…
In your WordPress admin go to Appearance > Menus > create a menu named “Primary Menu” > in the Theme Location widget select Primary Menu from the drop-down and click Save > from the Pages widget add the Pages that you want to display in the navigation by selecting the check-box and clicking “Add to Menu” > to add your Product Categories you’ll need to go out to your site and click on each product category > copy the URL for each category category > go back to Appearance > Menus > in the Custom Links widget Paste the URL to your Product Category and click Add to Menu > repeat this process for each of your product categories.
Once all of the Pages and Product categories that you want to display in your main navigation have been added to the “Primary Menu” go ahead and drag-and-drop them into the order that you’d like them to actually display on the site as shown in the screen captures below…
In regards to the recommended Artificer theme logo size… It looks like 190x65px would be ideal dimensions for the Artificer theme. My recommendation would be to go to Fiverr.com and search for freestyldesign (go to fiverr and search for “freestyldesign” and you’ll find the gig) – I’ve used this gig for the logo creation of many WordPress sites and they do a really good job.
Just remember to request request the following when having your logo made…
1. The Logo should be made much Larger than what you’ll use for your site so that you can use it for other purposes. You can always make it smaller but cannot make it larger. So I’d request that the logo dimensions be at least 5 to 6 times larger than the recommended dimensions (950×325)
2. Request the Photoshop files (PSD) so you have them going forward and can make updates to your logo.
3. Request that the logo be created on a Transparent background so that it blends into the background color of your Artificer site.
Please let me know if this helps answer your questions or if it leads to more. Thanks again for your support and best of luck with your site going forward!
Adam
Hello Adam
Thank you so much for your response and detailed directions. However, I was unable to complete my task because for some reason my top menu bar with the links to home/about the artist/shop/etc. has disappeared. I have gone everywhere I can think of in WP and I cannot find anything that would re-activate it. any advise? sorry this is getting a bit overwhelming for me and I think I am clicking on too many things and screwing myself up even more! lol
Hello Adam
Thank you so much for your detailed response. However, I ran across a weird problem. I was able to follow your instructions until I got to the part where I have to copy and paste the URL of the pages I created…..for some reason my entire menu bar (with the links for the home page, about the artists, shop, etc.) is gone??… I don’t know what I did but I have been clicking all over and maybe I deactivated something? I tried to fix the problem but cannot seem find where or why my menu bar is gone. I even tried to reinstall the Artificer theme but that did no good. Sorry to bother you, but by any chance can you help me? Thank you so much
Deanna
Hi Deanna,
It’s difficult to say exactly what might be causing the menu issue without being able to see in the WP admin. When you go to Appearance > Menus what do you see? Do you see a custom menu setup or is the custom menu you were creating gone?
If you want to send me an email with login credentials I can take a closer look at it on Monday or Tuesday. Just use the form on our “Contact” page. The Contact form forwards to my email. Thanks,
Adam
Hello Adam
Sorry, I understand that this is difficult without seeing what is going on. Here is a screen shot of what I see under Appearance > Menus in my admin. I think I will send you my login info too so you can dig around if you need to. Thank you a thousand times for all of your help. I really appreciate it
Deanna
Hi,
Love the video’s and they helped me solve problems I had
There is one thing that bugs the heck out of me and that is adding a new product. There I have the option of adding 3 pix (4 incl the popup). Now where can I find the settings to change the size of the images shown in the browser. I can’t find it anywhere and I suspect it’s a fixed size and not being able to change it at all. Am I correct or is there a settings option to change the size when viewing this in the browser.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Best regards,
Joann.
Hi Joann,
I’m happy to hear that our WooCommerce tutorials have been helpful – thanks for your support.
In terms of product images, it’s best to try and make them all the same size / dimensions if possible. Photoshop is the image editing software I use to manage my product images, however, a free tool such as Gimp would work just as well. But editing your product images so that they are all the same size before uploading them to your site should help.
I’m not sure that I’m completely understanding your question when you ask, “where can I find the settings to change the size of the images shown in the browser”?
The WooCommerce specific themes will automatically re-size your product images to fit in the theme. However, when they are clicked on they should display the full size of the image. I’ve not spent much time testing Image settings in the WordPress admin. However, I do know that if you go to Theme Options > Dynamic Images > you’ll see “Resizer Settings” and “Thumbnail Setting” > I would recommend starting there and see if that helps.
If you can provide more information / be more specific on the issue you’re experiencing in regards to product images I’ll do my best to find a more detailed solution. Thanks again for your support!
Adam
Can anybody tell me how many sub-categories are possible to set up?
thanx
Hey there,
Subscribed to your youtube channel after watching a few of your videos, and they are most impressive. Have done a bit of searching, and was hoping you might guide me in the right direction with your knowloedge of WooCommerce. It is to do with menu heirachy, and sub category names.
I am helping setting up a commerce site for newborn to teenagers, and looking at the following top menu structure as an example :
HOME – NEWBORN – TODDLERS – KIDS – TEENS
However, my issue arises because i will have product categories of T-Shirts, Pants, Tops etc. that are used for all main categories. Will i have to rename them, or are they assigned seperately when i link them to the parent menu category. Example :
NEWBORN > SHIRTS
TODDLERS > BOYS > SHIRTS
TODDLERS > GIRLS > SHIRTS
KIDS > 2 TO 8 > BOYS > SHIRTS
etc. etc. Hope this makes sense.
Hi Rob,
Thanks for subscribing to our Youtube channel and for the positive feedback – your support is very much appreciated! The quick answer to your question is that you’ll need to make unique product sub-categories / child categories for each main / parent product category.
For example, the way I would structure the your product categories is as follows…
Main Product Categories / Parent Categories…
Newborn
Toddlers
Kids
Product Sub-Categories / Child Categories…
Newborn shirts
toddler boys shirts
toddler girls shirts
Boys 2 to 8 Shirts
Girls 2 to 8 Shirts
and so on…
When you create your products, select both the parent / main category and the corresponding child / sub-categories. Please let me know if I’m following your question and if this helps answer it. Thanks again for your support.
Adam
How good is this site !!!!
Thanks for the feedback. I guess the critical part is when i am adding each product, i am assigning it to the specific Product Category (parent)/Sub Category (child), and not to a general Category.
Thanks again for you help.
As a first timer trying to develop a website, the videos have been invaluable, so a huge thanks for that. I have struggled on, but do have a couple of issues I hope to get help for.
1) Is it possible to change the font style for the product descriptions?
2) Everytime I go to Mystile>Themes>Customize the site crashes.
3) Am I stuck with the size of the homepage image as it’s huge and not the way I’d like it to look ?
Many thanks for any assistance on any of the questions.
Kind Regards,
Simon
Hi Simon,
I’m glad to hear that our WooCommerce tutorials have been helpful. I’ll try to answer you questions in order…
1. I believe that it is possible to change the font style for your product descriptions via the use of the WooThemes Custom Typography Shortcode. To use the custom typography shortcode go to the product in the WordPress admin and click the Woo icon > you’ll see a list of woothemes shortcodes > select the Typography > Custom Typography shortcode and you’ll be able to customize it from there.
2. I’m not sure I’m following you in regards to the site crashing every time you go to Mystile > Themes > Customize… Are you referring to Mystile > Theme Options in the WordPress admin? Please provide more information on this issue.
3. I believe you’ll need to keep the width of the homepage banner image the same but you can shrink the height. You can definitely compress the image so it does not take up so much space on the home page. The banner will stretch across the width but the height can be reduced. If you have Photoshop or any image editing tool, simply make the banner image smaller and then re-upload it. If you look at the homepage banner image on one of our Mystile theme deomo sites you’ll see it’s not as large as the one on your site… clottingfactors.org
Thanks for the positive feedback on our WooCommerce tutorials and let me know if this helps answer your questions.
Adam
Hi, Fantastic info, thank you… has helped a lot.
I’m having real trouble sorting the homepage on the Mystile template to only show the main product categories and not subcategories.
is there a place I can edit the template php so it doesn’t show these?
Thanks
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the support and for letting us know that videos have helped.
In regards to the issue with sorting the Homepage of the Mystile theme to only show main / high level product categories… Are you referring to the WooCommerce Product Categories widget / categories displaying in the sidebar? Or, are you referring to actual subcategory products displaying on the homepage? Please provide more detail and I’ll do my best to find a solution. Thanks again for the positive feedback!
Adam
I am having this exact problem. On the main part of the home page not the side bar widget. The sub categories are showing up along with the main categories but I only want the main ones to show up and once the customer clicks that then it will show the sub categories. For example on my site the die cut villians that is showing up with the other 2 is a sub category to the marvel series 3. Hope this helps as something for you to look at.Thanks
Hi Darren,
Have you had a chance to check out our tutorial on customizing the homepage of the Mystile theme? If not, please take a look at that tutorial because I think it will help guide you on getting rid of sub-categories from the homepage of the Mystile theme. Please let me know if that helps. If not, let me know as well and I’ll take a closer look. Thanks,
Adam
Hello, really finding your video’s super helpful! I am having a problem getting the category widget to work. I set up my category’s in the woocommerce tab. The widget just has uncategorized, and no product categories.
Hey Logan – I’m glad to hear that our WooCommerce tutorials have been helpful. Thanks for the positive feedback! In regards to the issue with the category widget… It sounds like you’d like to display your Product Categories on the sidebar but your blog categories are showing instead. If that is the case, make sure that you are using the “WooCommerce Product Categories” widget and Not the “Categories” widget. The “Categories” widget will only show the normal categories that are associated to your blog. However, the WooCommerce Product Categories widget will display your product categories which I think is what you’re looking for. Let me know if this helps answer your question.
Thanks again for your support,
Adam
Hi Adam
I’m using woo commerce for the first time. Your videos are amazing so thank you! Where I’m struggling is that I’ve created Product categories and subcategories. The Categories appear on my nav bar and the sub categories appear as drop downs. However, when I click the drop down boxes the blog pots are empty?! Ive no idea what I’m doing wrong. Any ideas please?
Kind Regards
Emma
Hi Emma,
I’m glad to hear you’ve decided to build your site with WooCommerce and that our tutorials have been helpful. Thank you for the positive feedback and encouragement.
I took a quick look at your site and I see the issue that you’re referring to. For example, when I click Lingerie > Corsets I get a page that says “No Results Found”. The same happens for each category and sub-category…
Check to make sure that your products are assigned to a specific category and/or sub-category. I’ve not yet worked with the Style Shop theme but my guess is that if you don’t have any products assigned to a product category you’ll get a “no results found” page. So make sure that the products you’ve created are assigned to specific product categories. Please start there and let me know if that helps resolve the issue. If not, please use the Contact form (link to contact page is in footer of UploadWP.com) to send me more specific information on the issue and I will take a closer look and hopefully find a solution.
Thanks again for your support.
Adam
Hi Adam
I’ve done this under the ‘footwear’ category with the sub category ‘burlesque’. I’ve filled in a contact form with my details on I’d be very grateful if you can assist me – I’m tearing my hair out lol!
Kind Regards
Emma
Hi,
Thanks a lot for your tutorials, they have been a great help!
I’m working on woostore theme
A question concerning breadcrumbs: why is the breadcrumbs on cat pages displaying fine but not on single product page? For simple product page I get
Home > shop > Products > name of the products
wereas on cat pages
Home > cat > subcat > name of the products.
Is it a problem in my settings?
Thanks a lot for your reply.
I recently transferred my store to woocommerce in WordPress from Zen cart. So far it’s worked well, however, when I view the Product Categories panel in the Admin, it’s not listed hierarchically… any way to accomplish this because it would be extremely helpful!
Nevermind man, I got it.
Hello There,
Thank you so much for your tutorials. I’m a first timer building a website. My problem is my images being of different sizes. Specifically on my Essences page. I would like them all uniform. I have my settings all ticked to hard crop in the WooCommerce/Settings/Catalog. I downloaded & installed Regenerate Thumbnails & haven’t had any luck with this either. Do I need to re-size the images before i upload them or can I do this easily in Shelflife? If I need to re-size them before uploading then could you recommend me a program that will be easy to learn!!! Many thanks
Hi Colin,
Thanks for your question and for your support. Try resizing your images before uploading them. I typically use PhotoShop to make all of my images the same dimensions. However, a very good free alternative to Photoshop is Gimp. Gimp is a freely distributed image manipulation program that has much of the same functionality as Photoshop. If you do a Google search for “Gimp” you’ll find the link to download it. Go ahead and install Gimp and make all of your images the same dimensions. Let me know if this helps. Thanks,
Adam
Many thanks I will give this a go.
Hi Adam,
Sorry that this is an old thread but I am working on a woocomerce store and was hoping you’d offer your advice on sub category permalinks.
I want the permalink for sub-categories to look the same as the main categories.
e.g: http://www.wishlantern.co.nz/product-category/floating-water-lanterns/flower-candles/
I would like to show up as http://www.wishlantern.co.nz/product-category/flower-candles/ without the master category prepended. I jut think it will be better for SEO and tidier. I know the shortened URL currently works but this is not the main URL WP see’s.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your comment. I’m honestly not sure so I’m going to go ahead and publish your comment with the hope that someone out there can chime in with a good answer. Thanks again for contacting us.
Adam