Introduction

Filtering provides you with another way of organising your items and products in addition to the usual categories used for navigation. These filters can then be used on the front end of your site to include or exclude items on any particular listing page.

To give an example, you may set up the filter type "Screen size" within a product category called "Televisions". Inside of this filter type, you may add the filters 46" to 52", 37" to 42", 26" to 32", 19", etc. When a customer browses into your televisions category, this would then give them the ability to filter the list by the screen size filters you have set up.

To start setting up item filtering on your site, click on the Filtering option under Item Management in the left hand admin navigation.

Choosing an item set

Clicking on the Filter setup button on the first screen will provide you with a select box to choose one of your primary item types. Typically this will include Products, articles, etc. After choosing an item type you can opt to set up filters for the entire set of items of that type, or choose a category of items within.
If you select Choose category, a category browser will appear which will allow you to select the category you intend to set up filters for.

Once happy with your selection, press the OK button to proceed to the next stage.

Setting up your filters

This next stage consists of three main steps. All changes within this interface apply immediately, so there is no need to press any buttons to confirm your actions.

Filter types and filters

You can set up as many filter types as you like, but you should aim to create filter types in which you will be able to add a number of individual filters. Popular filter types include colours and sizes.

Clicking on any filter type allows you to add as many individual filters as you like. So if you have chosen to add colours as a filter type you might add red, green, blue, pink and purple as filters.

To add a filter type or filter, simply press the Add button at the top of the appropriate interface area.
To edit the name, first select the filter type or filter so that it changes colour to yellow, then type into the white coloured text box.
To remove a filter type or filter, simply press the delete icon to the right of the element you wish to delete.

Items

Selecting a filter will now provide you with a list of items which you can add to the filter. The listing contains the usual pagination and text filtering and also allows you to view a list of all available items, or items which are added or not added to the selected filter. Moving your mouse over any of these items will show you a thumbnail version of the primary image associated with that item, if available, in a tooltip.

To add or remove items from the filter, simple tick or untick the box next to the item name.

Website front-end

Filters can be used in a number of ways on the front-end of your site. Usually best as a set of optional select boxes or text links.