Category Display
Hello all. It's been an exciting week all around. I've actually managed to get a few things done. You may or may not see these as anything special but it's a learning experience to me and it's always exciting to learn something new.
I had a little time Saturday to play with the website. Every time I open our site, all I can think of is the changes I would like to make but with the ongoing effort to get our products displayed, I don't have time right now. I know others get tired of hearing that. I'll let you in on a secret... I don't like hearing myself say it either.
What did I do about it? I picked the thing that bothers me the most. Since we've got soooo many categories of products and our format was set to put those in one column, a potential shopper has to scroll down to see all of the categories. Secondly, they are listed in alphabetical order so our "yarn" category showed up at the bottom... ick. That's the bulk of our sales and we're making folks work to get there. This is the issue I chose. I know we have many others but give me a little time.
With my relatively new HTML skills... spring class at SLCC... I took a look at the category template. WOW! I can actually pick things out and know what they mean. I recognized a table for the categories. It has tags and such and is populated via PDG's program based on what categories I tell it to display. I see a "begin repeat" and an "end repeat" with all the juicy stuff in the middle in the form of a table. I would not have known it was a table without the HTML class... or another Dummies book..:-)
It's me.... this means I get out my wonderful HTML text/tutorial from our class and start looking for answers. I wasted a little time there... not really wasted as I refreshed my teeny bit of knowledge of HTML tables in the process.
What next? I went to PDG's support page available through my Admin panel. I searched for a "multiple colum" category page solution. I had added it to the "requested options" list several months ago. I must not have been the only one though. There it was. The snippet I need to add to get multiple columns... yea!!!
Amazingly, it only took a matter of minutes... after I read the readme.txt file that came with it... and Voila! multiple columns! This makes me happy.
Besides adding products, what's next? I like the columns but I think each category needs a picture or graphic to represent it. I'm on the hunt for those. I have a few graphics available free through my server package... not much there. I'm going to have to search the web for pics I can purchase or even better, offered for FREE. I'll see what I can find but I think this would be a worthy addition to our site.
In the meantime, the regular J-O-B is extra super crazy these days... I love a challenge. I'm keeping a list in my head and I'll keep working. Need to tweak the keywords this week too.... always something.
Till next time,
Sandy
