Different Settings For Sorting Products On Category Screen
There are two sections in the Miva Merchant 9 Admin where you can go to influence the sorting order of products as they appear in Category Pages. The first place would be in the Edit Category page, which you can get to by clicking into Catalog and then the Categories tab. In this example will be working in the Books category. Once were in the Edit Category page for Books, we can click on the Products tab to see list of products assigned to this category. Note that if you see a larger list of every product in your store, then you can filter this list to show just assigned products by clicking on this button here and selecting “Show Assigned.” Let me view the Books category by clicking on “More” and “View on Live Store” and notice that the sorting order starts with the Philosophy book and then the Adventure book and then the Gothic Horror book. If I go back into the Admin we’ll see that the books are listed as Philosophy, Adventure and Gothic Horror.
I'd like to point out that these two buttons; the “Sort Products” button and the “Edit Display Order Button are the only way to rearrange the products as they appear in the category page on the screen. From the Edit Category page you can only influence the sorting order of these products on the store page via the “Sort Products” button and the “Edit Display Order” button. If I click on Sort Products, I have the option of name ascending, name descending, code ascending and code descending. So if I select name ascending, my products are now sorted in alphabetical order and when we go back to the store page and hit “Refresh” these products are also sorted in alphabetical order. Note that I can change the sorting order of these products on this screen by clicking on any of these tab labels. Sorting products in the Admin in this way has no impact on how these products are displayed on the store page. Notice my first books here are Philosophy books, Fantasy books and the Gothic Horror books, but when I go back to the store page and hit “Refresh,” the sorting order here has no semblance to how my products are sorted in the Store Admin. When I click on the Edit Display Order button, again, the products in my admin will reorder themselves to mimic how they appear on the store page. Furthermore, a column called Order appears on the far left, assigning each product in this category a numeric value that represents their position on the Category page. At this time the Philosophy book is the last one on the list, but if I change the order number to be two and press enter it will become the new second product in the list and the old second product will now become the third product and so on. Adventure, Philosophy, Fantasy it's go to the store and hit Refresh then we'll see Adventure, Philosophy and Fantasy. By default when you add a new product to your Miva Merchant store, the new product gets appended to the end of your products list. So when I click on this plus sign to add a new product, I'll create an art book, make it $150.99 and hit “Add.”
I've now just added an art book to my books category and when we edit the Display Order of these products, you will see that the newest book which is Art Book appears on the bottom of the list. Also, when we go to the Store page again appears in the bottom of this list. Now if you don't like that Miva Merchant add new products to the bottom of your products list, you can change that behavior. Which brings us to the second area in the store where you can go to influence the sorting order of products in your category. For that we need to edit the Category Display page. Let's go into our menu, click on user interface and scroll down this list until you see the Category Display page and scroll down until you see a section called Category Product List Layout. In this section you will see Sorting Options and Default Sort Method. If you have Default Sort Method set to “Default,” you can sort the order of your products on your category pages by name ascending, name descending, code ascending, code descending, best selling products first, lowest priced first, highest priced first, or newest products first. Note that if you selected any of these options that are not default than any custom sorting you've done from the Edit Category pages here, will be ignored. Having Default selected in this drop-down essentially engages two behaviors; the first behavior is that all products in your category pages are listed from oldest to newest, the second behavior is it takes account any custom reordering of products that you do from the Edit Category pages like what we did in the Books category. Selecting “Newest” for your default sort method will reorder all of your products on your categories to appear with newly added products first, and pushing the older products further down your products list. Finally, selecting the Default option, for default sort method and then Reverse Default Display Order” will also sort the products in your category pages from newest to oldest, but will take into account the custom order you’ve done from an Edit Category page. Let me go ahead and click “Update” to save my change and let’s go back into the Edit Category page for Books. At this time I have Adventure Book, Philospohy Book and then Fantasy Book as my top three books. When I go into the store page and hit “Refresh” you can see the products appear in reverse order, Adventure, Philosophy and Fantasy bringing up the tail end of this product list. Keep in mind that they are appearing in reverse order so if I change the Philosophy book to be the last product in my store admin, I should expect it to be the first book on the category screen.