Managing Products & Categories > Categories & Subcategories

Importing/Exporting Categories

Importing & exporting categories is simple. If you will be importing/adding categories in bulk, you will need to first export your categories to make sure you follow the correct format when uploading the CSV file.

If the categories you are adding are all new, you will need to leave the "_ID" column blank. Category ID's will be assigned by SunShop automatically. You don't want to start assigning subcategories until after you've added some categories because you'll need to reference the parent category's ID for this.

A few things to note about the columns in your categories export file:

_ID: If you are adding a new category, this should be left blank. If editing existing categories, this should be populated with the category id numbers & you should not change these.

TITLE: Your category's name/title. Avoid using any non-alpha numeric characters. Doing so may cause issues when importing/exporting, and even displaying your categories.

DESCRIPTION: A description of your category.

META TITLE: This is the meta title that will be used in the HTML for this category.

META DESCRIPTION: This is the meta description that will be used in the HTML for this category.

META KEYWORDS: Keywords that will be used in the HTML for this category.

THUMB IMAGE: Category thumbnail image (File name only).

TINY IMAGE: Category tiny image (File name only).

AVAIL TO: A "0" will mean that this categor is available to the Default group (Or all.). If you would like to assign it to only a specific group, you will need that group's ID number.

VIEWABLE: This needs to be set to a "1" for viewable or "0" for not viewable.

SUBOF: ID of parent category. (If this is a subcategory)

DORDER: Order in which the categories will be displayed in storefront. (If adding new, you do not need to edit this column/field)

Note: When importing, it is extremely important to note what the "Import Method" dropdown menu is set to.

Additional Information:

1.	To take advantage of the import feature, the "/admin/backup" folder must be writable.

To import a CSV file, click on the Import/Export link on the left hand side. It doesn't matter where you access this section from, as long as you set the "Data Source" drop down to the correct type of import. Likewise, when exporting make sure the drop down is set to the correct data source. You need to make sure that you keep the same column structure in your CSV files to avoid database problems or errors during file imports. You also want to be careful when importing any HTML data. You must use the HTML equivalents and not raw HTML characters. Using commas in the CSV file may also cause unwanted results or errors so, you will want to use the HTML equivalent (Example: Use "," instead of ",").