One of the most basic (and most important) steps in setting up your online store is creating the products that you'll be selling in the system. Products have many attributes, allowing you to create a wide range of product types. This guide walks through adding just a simple product, using the defaults for as many options as possible. For a more in-depth explanation of all the product attributes, please see this page.
Creating an Entity
Before you can create a product, you must have an entity to map it to, so that customers can find the product in your store. Entities are what the software calls Categories, Departments, Distributors, and Manufacturers. Products are generally grouped into one or more of those entities. As with products, entities have many attributes that affect their use, which are explained in detail here. This guide covers creating a very basic category.
1 - First, click on Organization → Manage Categories in the admin menu.
2 - Click one of the green plus (+) sign buttons. Clicking the + at the bottom will add a new parent-level category. Clicking one of the + signs next to existing categories will add a subcat under that category.
3 - Give your category a Name, and click 'Add New'
Adding a Product
Now that you have a category to 'hold' the products you create, you can start adding the things you're going to sell:
1 - First, go to Products → Manage Products.
2 - Next, click the green + button at the bottom left.
3 - Now fill in the required fields on the Main tab. The fields that must be completed at a minimum to create a basic product are explained below:
| Attribute | Description |
| Name | The products's name. This is visible to all customers |
| Product Type | General type of product (generic, gift card, kit, etc). Most products will be 'Generic Product' |
| Manufacturer | Manufacturer. Use the predefined "Generic Mgf" if no custom ones have been created |
| Display Format XmlPackage | The XML package chosen here determines how the product detail page is laid out. For this product, we'll use product.simpleproduct.xml.config, the most basic of the packages. |
4 - Every product should have images as well, so next click on the Images tab. By default, the software is set up to create icon (which display in the cart and on category pages) and medium (which display on the product detail page) images when you upload large (which display in a special popup window from the detail page) images, so click the Large 'Browse' button and upload the image you'd like to use for this product.
5 - Now your product needs a price. Click on the Variant tab, and set a base price for the product.
6 - Finally, click 'Add New' at the bottom, and your new product is complete.
