Table of Contents

Tips and tricks for BTO store managers

Taking advantage of hidden categories

In a store powered by ProductCart Build To Order, product categories are used not only to organize products within the store catalog so that customers may easily browse to them (e.g. Accessories > Printers > Laser Printers > Color), but also to organize all the items available for selection on the BTO configuration pages.

Now, it happens rather often that a category that makes sense on the BTO configuration page may not make sense in the storefront. That is: you need that category to organize selectable items on the BTO configuration pages, but you don't need it to show when customers browse your catalog.

What's the best way to solve the issue? Select the Hide this category in the storefront feature when you add or edit any product category.

To keep all the hidden categories together in the Control Panel, what some BTO store managers do is to create a top-level category called something like “BTO Only Categories” and then place all of the other, hidden categories in it (see image below).

Organizing hidden categories in a hidden parent

Use CSS to style the BTO configuration page

You'd like to apply some interface changes to the Build To Order configuration page (pc/configurePrd.asp). What can you do? Editing the source code of the Build To Order pages is not recommended. These are some of the most complex pages in ProductCart. Instead, you can use Cascading Style Sheets.

Specifically:

  • The area where all selectable items are shown (organized in categories) is contained in a table that has the class “pcBTOmainTable” assigned to it.
  • The rows that contain the categories of selectable items use the following, alternating classes: “pcBTOfirstRow” and “pcBTOsecondRow”.

You will find these classes mentioned in the main CSS file used by your ProductCart storefront, called “pcStorefront.css” and located in the pc folder. Add/edit the style definitions that use these classes, and you can apply all sorts of interesting interface changes to the configuration pages, such as special backgrounds, etc.

If you need help, consider hiring a Web designer that is experienced in CSS.


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