I knew somebody would say update!

Don't take it personal CC, I'm always late to update software (except Windows) to see what happens first.

But yes, I will update in the next few days. I have a busy few days ahead and will not be doing much on my site, but will report back my findings when I do get a chance to update & publish. Worse coming to worse, I can feature an item from each category until it's worked out (if this is the problem).

Hiya Scott,

It's not "empty" categories that we don't have showing up, take a look at my shop:
http://accessoriesoftheworld.com/shop

Go to the menu and click the categories button so the Categories page shows up. You'll see there are 6 categories there (this by the way is not the Pro version on my live shop yet, this is Basic version)

Now go to the menu and see how many categories "should" show up there. Every one of those has items in it. The problem is, that only the categories that have featured items in it are showing up on the page.

I just upgraded to the most recent builds for the programs (I was 1 behind) and ... now ...
My Pro shop is messed up in some other ways that I'm now rebooting computer to make sure it's not just me (don't know why it would be, but never know lol). I'll post those in a separate thread if they persist after reboot.

I haven't tried the basic version yet to see if anything has changed category wise but I'll do that after the reboot also. Back shortly with updated info.

I too have to conclude that something is not quite right with the categories in version 3.8.

From a practical sense if someone has specified a category, it should still show up even if there are no products in it. That way customers are aware you do actually sell that category of product, even if you don't currently happen to have them in stock just yet.

It shouldn't be hard to add a coming soon feature just like the sold out feature.

Or even a simple message like in other carts that simply says "There are no products to show in this category yet".

I have to disagree. If you have no products in a category, why then have a category at all if there is nothing to sell? If you have some "up coming" products that will be offered soon, then add them there but don't add an inventory count to it. This way the product info is there but they cannot purchase it.

I just cannot grasp any useful scenario of why to have a category with nothing in it. I am all for adding a feature to the software, but I really need to understand the "why" and not just "because".

There is also an issue right now where empty categories do appear in the navigation but not on the categories page. That we have already corrected so things are more consistent and it will be in the next update.

Here is a sample site: http://coffeecup-iis7.com/shop/ I have no featured products at all and each category appears. On http://coffeecup-iis7.com/shop/category.php I also have it set to just show category names. Each category still appears.

When working on these shops, make sure you have two separate projects and are not opening the same shop in SCC Basic and SCC Pro. That could cause issues.

We don't all sell stock products Scott. Some of those categories act as placeholders for items under physical construction. Without a user defined category in place many customers would not even be aware that the shop they were viewing offered that type of product, either historically, or impending. On a practical level a lot of us can't put a detailed description until the product is finalised and finished.

You have think of the wide diversity of products that people physically sell.

Will, that is the first rational explanation I have seen on this situation and makes sense.

See what can be accomplished with a well written description of the issue. In SCC Basic this wouldn't be something we could do because categories cannot have descriptions or images. However, it is something that could be accomplished in SCC Pro.

I will talk this over with the team here.

Take the scenario of a big auto parts bricks and mortar store. They may be out of bike racks but they don't remove the display stands. That way you know they do sell bike racks from time to time.

You need to take those developers away from their screens sometimes Scott.