We’ve got widgets for all sorts of things—widgets that make your blog awesomer, widgets that give your customers different ways to find just the right item, widgets that display links and provide a shortcut to the shopping cart and show your customer the last five new items you listed.
But you might need something else. Something we didn’t think to include (it does happen!). You might need a ‘Shop by’ category that nobody’s ever thought of before. Say you sell patterns, and you want your customers to be able to shop for patterns by designer. With our links widget, you can do just that.
First you’ll want to categorize your patterns by designer. The add categories tutorial shows you how to do this—you’ll want to add a category called ‘Shop by Designer’, and add subcategories for each designer you use.
While you’re doing this, note the ‘category slug’ for each new subcategory you’re adding. This will likely be the same as the subcategory name, but it might not be, so watch this closely.
Write or copy these slugs somewhere; you’ll need them soon.
Now go in and edit your items, putting each one into the appropriate category.
So you’ve got a ‘Shop by Designer’ category, and a bunch of subcategories. Next you’ll want to get a URL for each category. This is a little tricky, but it makes sense, I swear.
Go to your shop and click on a category. Any category. Doesn’t matter. Go to the category page, and copy the URL.
Put that somewhere safe, because you’re gonna need it. Sound familiar? Ought to, because this is where you’ll need those category slugs again. It’s time to add the links to each category.
The Links Tutorial goes over how to add links, but I’m going to do it again here, because a specific example is never a bad idea. Locate the ‘Links’ menu on the left sidebar, and click on ‘Add New’.
Now, add each of your subcategories as links, one at a time. The ‘Web Address’ is made up of the category URL you saved earlier, followed by the appropriate category slug for that category.
So we copied this URL: http://demo.wickedplum.com/category/shop-by-designer/accessories/
And we have this category slug: versace
Since we want to display the ‘Versace’ category instead of the ‘Accessories’ category (which is where we got the URL), we’ll put them together like this: http://demo.wickedplum.com/category/shop-by-designer/versace/.
Like so:
For each one, enter the name and web address of the subcategory, then assign it a ‘Parent’, in this case the ‘Shop by Designer’ category…
…and then click ‘Add Link’ to save it.
So you’ve got a link to each of your new Shop by Design subcategories; how do you display it? That’s where our widgets come in.
Click on ‘Widgets’ in the lefthand sidebar, under ‘Appearance’.
Place the ‘Your Shop Links’ widget where you want it in your sidebar. (The widgets tutorial goes into more detail.)
The box will open up automatically. Click on ‘All Links’ and choose ‘Shop by Designer’.
Click on ‘Save’. You’ll now have a sidebar widget, titled ‘Shop by Designer’, that will display each of your designer subcategories. Poof!
