Create Subcategories for a Commerce Category
Any category can be used as a subcategory, and you can assign the same category as a subcategory for multiple categories. You assign subcategories on the Subcategory subtab of the Commerce Category page at Commerce > Content Management > Catalog & Categories > Commerce Categories.
When you create a category you define basic information about that category such as name, title, and meta description. See Define Commerce Categories Basic Settings for more information.
When you assign a category as a subcategory, you can override the basic settings of the category with different values to use when the category is functioning as a subcategory. The overrides may be for all, some, or none of the category’s primary values. For example, you have categories named Outdoors, Camping, and Equipment. You assign the Equipment category as a subcategory for both the Camping and Outdoors categories. For the Outdoors category assignment, you want to use a different banner image than you use for the equipment category assignment so you create an override for the banner image.
When you assign a category as a subcategory, it is no longer accessible as a root level category and can be accessed only through its subcategory assignments.
Canonical Tags for Commerce Categories
When you use URL overrides for subcategories you create a situation where category pages with different URLs provide the exact same content. To promote SEO best practice for pages with duplicate content, SCA adds the HTML canonical link tag to these pages. The page for the primary path URL contains a self canonical tag, and pages that override the URL have a canonical tag that targets the primary parent path as well. To continue with the example listed above, the canonical link tags might be as follows:
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Primary Parent URL |
http: |
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URL With Override |
http: |
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The Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced uses relative paths in canonical URLs. Since search engines do not index canonical URLs with relative paths, you should extend the Facets.Browse.View.js in the Facets module to use absolute paths instead. See Canonical Tags Populated With Relative Paths. This is necessary only for the Vinson release of SuiteCommerce Advanced.
Order of Subcategories
The order of the subcategories on the Subcategories subtab, can reflect the order of how the categories will be listed on the site. You can use Site Management Tools to change the order of the categories. Any changes made to the order of the categories in Site Management Tools are also reflected on the Subcategories subtab. See Move a Category or Subcategory for more information. The order in which categories are displayed on the site can be specified in the SCA Categories Configuration, see Categories Subtab for more information about configuring Commerce Categories in SCA.
Before you can assign a category as a subcategory, you must first create a category record for the category. See Set Up Commerce Categories.
To assign a subcategory to a category:
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Create a new category record or edit an existing category record.
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Select the Subcategories subtab.
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Select the category to assign as a subcategory from the categories dropdown list. Enter override values for any of the following or leave the override fields empty to use the default from the category record for the subcategory.
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Name Override
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Description Override
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URL Fragment Override
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Title Override
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Heading Override
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Page Banner Override
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Thumbnail Image Override
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Addition to
<head>Override -
Meta Keywords Override
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Meta Description Override
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Sitemap Priority Override
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Display in Web Site Override
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Click the Add button to add the subcategory.
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Repeat the previous two steps for each subcategory you want to add.
View Category URL’s
The URL subtab of the Commerce Categories record provides you with a listing of all URLs that can be used to access a subcategory page. This is especially useful when you have a subcategory assigned to multiple parent categories, because the subcategory page can be accessed through multiple URLs. To see the URLs for a subcategory page:
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Go to Commerce > Content Management > Catalog & Categories > Commerce Categories.
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Click the category record for which you want to view URLs.
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Click the URL subtab.