Hey, just playing around with shop creator. Really new to it.. How do I add the same product to muliple categories? E.g I may have it in a type of product category as well as a shop by brand category.. If I just copy and paste it, won't the same product show up twice in the database and therefore not function properly? For instance, 1 item is purchased. Would this reduce the items in stock number in both of the product cells?

Hiya TM,

Yes you are correct on it showing the same product, but what it does is assigns it a separate SKU number and so it will "work" persay, but what it won't do is calculate your inventory correctly as it won't know they are the same product, it will treat them as separate products. For some that's fine as they don't use the inventory function, but if you do then it would mess that up for you as you'd have to manually correct that a lot. Not a real big drawback really, but definitely one that we're hoping they will address in an update which it sorely needs. Hopefully they will find time after they get the Responsive Site Designer released.

I would highly suggest that you put a suggestion in the forum for the SSCP suggestions thread so they can see that there is still interest in putting a single product in multiple categories.

In the meantime, if you can get past the lack of inventory control for those products it's not too bad. It won't mess up the database at all, just your own inventory counts which will mess up the "Sold Out" status of the products if someone happens to buy out all of them from one category and not the other(s). Basically what it will do is:

Marks something sold out if someone buys the last of that particular product, but only that product in that category.
It doesn't recognize that it's tied to any other products or categories as all products are separate entities.
You will need to monitor those products closely to keep the status alive if there are still some in stock.
OR
You can opt to not use the Inventory control at all which will then render all of the above issues void.
This will not mark anything as "Sold Out" ever, so you'll have to monitor the product inventories yourself to be sure you removed a product when it's sold out so you prevent people from purchasing a product you don't have in stock.
Removing a product from being published is a very easy thing to do as you just click the little "world" icon that is on each product to tell it that you don't want it published (black and white world is off, blue is on) and publish your shop and those products will no longer display. This way you don't have to remove them completely and can turn them back on when it's back in stock. Saves the work of having to redo the product each time and works pretty slick.

Various ways around it, you may come up with some creative ways yourself too.

Hope that helps.

Thanks a lot for the detailed response. I will make a post in the suggestions thread.

Hmmm... This is a tad awkward as I will be stocking quite a wide range of products in limited numbers. Some products may literally only have 1 or 2 in stock at any one time.

Only managing my business / site part time of an evening after work, so therefore of a product does sell I really need the website to display it as sold out. I guess the easiest option is to give up on the idea of a single product stored in multiple categories. But it would make it harder for the customer to find a specific product if it's only listed in one area!

Hopefully an update comes along soon as you suggested!

Thanks again.

There is a couple other little tricks you can do that, although they aren't they most convenient, they do help some.

First you can create tags in your descriptions so when people are searching for a particular item they can find it easier. Basically this is just key words for the in shop search element.

Second you can create an extra page (if you haven't used them all up already that is) and make it a sort of Site Map in a sense. What I did for a client was created a tree listing of each of the categories, and in each of the categories I added all the stocked products he had in the store. Then when things were taken out or replaced with something else, or whatever changes you might make, all you do is update that page's links by adding the page of the shop for that product. Takes a bit of time to set up because you have to grab all the links for each product initially, but once you have them all in there it's just alterations when you change things in your store. It worked out pretty well for his needs, and the upkeep isn't that much work either once you have the products all added in.

Hope that helps and good luck with your store!

Thanks very much, i'll be quite a way off launching due to financing. But I think I am sold on the CC SCCP over other demos I have tried. Who knows, their maybe a responsive update before I actually come to launch!