Setting up Products
FoxyShop lets you set a lot of information about each product. Let’s go through each of the fields to explain how they work.
Tip: Each of the edit areas in the product entry page can be dragged around and/or minimized. If you aren’t using one, you can minimize it and move the order so that it fits better for your workflow. Check the Screen Options button at the top-right of the screen if you are missing an entry box.
Tip: if you will have multiple products that have a similar setup, I recommend installing the excellent Duplicate Post plugin by Enrico Battocchi. This plugin works perfectly for FoxyShop products. Keep in mind that it doesn’t copy images to the new product.
Product Details
In the product details panel, set your base price. This is the price from which all variations will adjust. If you don’t enter anything for your product code, the code will be set as the product’s internal WordPress post ID. The default weight and weight type (english or metric) can be set on your settings page. Note that if you select metric, you should also select this option in your FoxyCart admin control panel. You can enter weight that is accurate to a tenth of an ounce/gram and can also enter 1.5 in the lb/kg box and the correct number of oz/gm will be automatically calculated on-the-fly.
Product Quantity
There are three quantity options: minimum, maximum, and disable. If you enter a minimum quantity, that number will be pre-filled in the product quantity box. If you enter a maximum, the quantity box becomes a dropdown with all valid selections. For this reason it’s not recommended that you enter a very large number in the maximum quantity box. The minimum and maximum entries are also passed to the cart so that customers can’t order more or less than you set. If you check the Hide Quantity option, the quantity box will not be displayed with the product. This does not affect the cart, and quantity can still be changed in the cart itself.
Other Product Detail Settings
You’ll want to select your FoxyCart category or leave it as default. You can adjust the categories that appear here by changing the category list on the FoxyShop settings page. These categories should mirror the categories you’ve setup on your FoxyCart account. If you are using FoxyCart 0.7.2 or higher you’ll have a button to automatically sync your category list from FoxyCart.
You can also choose to have a product hidden from the public view. When this box is checked, the product can still be accessed directly but won’t be shown in any categories or on the all-products page. It will be shown on the product sitemap feed.
If your SSO settings allow for checkout account required on a product-by-product basis, there will be a checkbox here called “Require Account For Checkout”.
Product Categories
Farther down in the right column you can check off your product categories. You can, of course, select as many categories as you want. If you want a product category to be hidden, put an underscore in front of it like this: _Hidden Category.
These categories are for display only. If you want to control shipping, you’ll need to setup shipping categories in the FoxyCart admin control panel and copy the category names to your FoxyShop settings page.
Sale Pricing
If you have a sale price for a particular product, enter it in the sale price box. If you would like to enter a start date and/or an end date you can do that as well. Enter your dates as month/day/year (or month/day for the current year, it’s not very picky) and the date will be validated. (Sorry to you non-US people!) If the date is accepted, FoxyShop will only apply the sale price within the date range specified. Please note that date ranges are not necessary: you can just use a straight sale price that is always available or you can simply use a start date or an end date.
If you are using WordPress 3.1+ you’ll get a nice calendar drop-down when clicking on the date fields.
Discounts and Subscriptions
If you want to add a discount to your product, you can use straight FoxyCart codes in the discount boxes. Refer to FoxyCart documentation for more information on creating valid discount codes. Because the boxes are kind of skinny, they expand when you click on them to make entering discount strings easier.
If you want to create subscriptions, click the Subscription Attributes link and enter your information. Again, use FoxyCart documentation for more information on subscriptions. Note that this section will not appear if you have not enabled it on your settings page.
The start and end dates can hold strtotime() arguments like “+3 months”, “+7 days”, etc. The dates will automatically be parsed on the product page and passed to FoxyCart in the correct format.
Inventory Levels
If you have enabled the inventory feature and turned on the datafeed, you will be able to manage inventory levels right here. Just enter a product code (more boxes will appear for variations) and the current stock as well as any custom alert levels. The default alert level can be set on the settings page.
Each product or variation must have a unique product code. You can set your product codes on a per-variation basis like this: Small{c:shirt-small}.
Product Tags
If you have enabled “Related Product Tags” you’ll get another box in the sidebar menu which will allow you to tag the product. Other products with the same tags will show up in the Related Products section of the sidebar. Note that these are a custom taxonomy and not traditional Post Tags. If you want to use Post Tags, see the Advanced Settings page.
Images
FoxyShop includes an image bar to make adding your images very easy. Just click the button, select your image and click upload. Once uploaded, the image will appear on the image bar. You can upload more images, rename images, or drag them around. The image in the yellow box is the featured image. Note, that you don’t need to save your product after making image changes, they are all saved on-the-fly.
Related and Bundled Products
If enabled, you can add specific related products. If you have a specific order in which you’d like them to appear, you can put the ID’s in the Order box, separated by comma.
You can also attach products to be bundled together. This will add multiple products at once. By default, this will add all secondary products with a price of $0.00. If you want all products to the cart with their regular price, there’s a setting in the Advanced Settings section. Be aware that at this time there’s nothing to stop people from removing the paid item and leaving the free items in the cart so this feature may not be too useful. Also, it doesn’t work well when adding more than five products at once as Internet Explorer has a URL length restriction. This feature must be turned on in the Settings page.
Custom Fields
Custom fields are enabled for FoxyShop products so you can extend the system with your own special fields. Additionally, if you enter cart, coupon, redirect, or output and a value the results will be passed directly to the shopping cart. These are reserved terms that FoxyCart will recognize (see FoxyCart documentation for more information).
Variations
Since product variations are a big deal and kind of complicated, there’s a separate page just for variations right here.
