OpenCart Products and Categories

Product catalogs in OpenCart allows you to manage, create and modify the products and product groups you can offer to your customers on your eCommerce store. This article will cover how you can add new products, new product categories, and managing product attributes.

Adding Products in OpenCart

To manage your product offering in OpenCart, log into your eCommerce store admin area and navigate to: Catalog -> Products page.

You should now be on a page listing the products you currently have in your store (if any). From this page, you will have the ability to create a new product or edit an existing product.

To create a new product, click on the blue + button located at the page’s top right corner.

Once you have clicked this button, you will be forwarded to a page with a form containing all of the options you can set for the product you wish to add, broken down into individual tabs across the top of the page.

General Tab

The general tab covers the product’s general details, such as the name, description, and meta information.

• Product Name – Enter the name of the product, which is the name your website visitors will see when browsing your product catalogs.
• Description – Enter details about the product you are selling. This will also be shown to your website visitors when they browse the product.

We recommend being as descriptive as possible in the product name and description as your website visitors will see these details when making their purchasing decision.

Meta Tag Title, Mega Tag Description, and Meta Tag Keywords are primarily used for search engines. This will determine how each product page will be presented in search results.

Data Tab

From the Data tab, you will be able to configure any physical settings of the product. You would only want to enter a field that is relevant to your product. For example, suppose you were selling books. In that case, you may wish to enter the books ISBN (International Standard Book Number), or if you are selling hardware components, you may want to enter the product’s MPN (Manufacturer Part Number).

Separate from the identifying IDs or numbers, you also have the option to set the following:

• Price – This will determine how much you will be selling the product to your customers.
• Quantity – If you have a limited quantity available for this product, enter the number of units you have or would like to sell. Once OpenCart has sold your entered amount of units the product will be marked out of stock until you add more.
• Minimum Quantity – If you would like to require customers to order multiple products enter the minimum amount they can purchase here. For example, if you were selling batteries and needed customers to buy a minimum of 4 barries per order, enter 4.
• Subtract Stock – If you have limited stock availability (as determined in Quantity), after each order, the available quantity will be reduced by how many the customer ordered.
• Out of Stock Status – You can customize what a customer would see if a product is marked as Out of Stock from 2-3 Days, In Stock, Out of Stock, or Pre-Order.

Attribute Tab

If you are using or plan to use custom product attributes for your products, you can enable them on each product from this tab.

FIX: For documentation on how to set up attributes, click here.

Image Tab

The Image tab allows you to upload images for each product. These images will be shown in the product listings as well as the product details page.

To add a new image to your product, click on the blue + button located towards the page’s bottom right.

You should see a table appear with a default OpenCart image, click on this image and 2 buttons will appear, giving you the option to edit (blue button) or delete (red button). Click on the blue button to change this image.

Once you have clicked this button, a popup should show you the images you have within your OpenCart installation. Select an existing image or click on the blue upload button to add a new image.

Repeat these steps to add images to all your products.

If you would like to change the order your images appear on your website, go back to the Image tab and adjust the Sort Order. The image with the lowest number will appear first.

Once your product is ready, click on the blue Save button located at the screen’s top right corner. Once done, your product will be saved in your eCommerce store’s Product Catalog.

Edit a product in OpenCart

To edit an existing product, log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to Catalog -> Products, which will take you to a page that lists all of your products. Find the product you would like to edit and click on the pencil located to the right of the table, next to the product.

You should now be presented with all of the options and settings for that product enabling you to make your desired changes. Once you have made those changes, click on the blue save button located at the page’s top right corner.

If you have many products, you can use the filtering option on the Product List page with the options to filter by:

• Product Name – The name you have set for this product.
• Model – If you have added a Model number you can filter by the model ID here.
• Price
• Quantity
• Status

Delete a Product in OpenCart

To delete a product in OpenCart, log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to Catalog -> Products.

You should now see a page listing all of your products in your eCommerce store. Find the product(s) you would like to delete and click the check box located on the product image’s left side. You can select multiple at once if you would like to delete products in batches.

Once you have selected all of the products you would like to delete, click the red delete button located at the page’s top right corner.

Creating Product Categories in OpenCart

By using Product Categories, you can group similar products giving your customers the ability to easily navigate through your store and select their preferred items. For example, if you sell laptops you can create a group containing all of the different laptops you sell.

To create a new product category, log into your OpenCart admin area and navigate to Catalog -> Categories.

From the category list page, you can create, edit or delete your categories. To create a new category, click the blue + icon located at the top right corner of the page.

When creating a new product category, you will need to input the Category name; you can also input a description for this category should you wish to do so.

It is recommended for SEO purposes to input a Meta Tag Title, Meta Tag Description and Meta Tag Keywords under the General tab as these would be shown in search engine results.

Once you have completed the basic details in the General tab, move onto the Data tab.

Here you can set up the following options:

• Parent – If you are creating a subcategory of an existing category, please select the parent category name. For example, if you sell laptops, you might have a parent category called ‘Laptops’ and the subcategories ‘HP’, ‘Dell’ etc.
• Filters – If you have already created filters relevant to this product category, you can select them here.
• Stores – If you run multiple OpenCart stores from one installation, you can select those that you would like this category to be enabled on.
• Image – If desired, upload a photo for this category. This image will be made visible to clients when browsing the category listings.
• Top – Selecting this will make your category appear in the top navigation menu of OpenCart. This only works for parent level categories and not subcategories.

If you have created a custom layout for your category you can select the layout from the Design tab. If you do not have a custom layout, you can leave this to the default option.

Once ready, click on the blue save button located at the top right corner of the page to create your new category.