Turn off a Category

[superche]

Ok as you may have guessed I am busy setting on a new install and importing stuff from my other store, but now need to turn off some categories, but it does not seem possible?
In v2.3.4.1 CE you just turn it off like a product

old system.JPG

But the option is not there in Phoenix?

new_system.JPG

Am I missing something?
How do I turn off 3D-Blitz?

[Kofod95]

It was an add-on for 2.3.4.1CE, and is not available in core. If I remember well, it has been discussed a couple of times how to do it, but without anything released publicly.
Is this something you'll need to do often, or just now when you're setting stuff up?
If you need it often you might consider if you could achieve the same thing with adverts, alternatively, a solution would have to be made by you or someone else.
If you only need it for a little while now, while populating the categories, you could maybe make a temporary solution with the display of categories only.

//Daniel

[14Steve14]

I seem to remember in the old version I had to add in an addon to turn off categories, or there was additional code added somewhere.

My current 1.7.0.11 store uses categories_manager to hide categories but it has not been updated for use with a more up to date version, and I have not tried installing it on my test site. It also has a few bugs which need ironing out but I can live with them for now.

There is a paid for addon here app.php/addons/paid_addon/zipur_product_manager which may do what you want, or maybe the developer could add something in to make it hide categories. Best thing to do is to contact them as ask.

[superche]

It was an add-on for 2.3.4.1CE, and is not available in core. If I remember well, it has been discussed a couple of times how to do it, but without anything released publicly.
Is this something you'll need to do often, or just now when you're setting stuff up?
If you need it often you might consider if you could achieve the same thing with adverts, alternatively, a solution would have to be made by you or someone else.
If you only need it for a little while now, while populating the categories, you could maybe make a temporary solution with the display of categories only.

//Daniel

Yes need to do very often, as we import large stock lists there are a few items we don't want to advertise so that category is turned off. We also move discontinued items to a discontinued category, if we just delete them they will be entered again and made active with the next import, our distributors will often not remove discontinued items for the stock list. I will have to get a quote from someone to make it happen.

[Kofod95]

Distributors sure know how to do things different from one another while still making sure it's troublesome for the retailers!

Good luck with it - I hope it turns out as you'd like it to!

//Daniel

[beerbee]

Hi @superche ,

I have something that does it but, unfortunately, for 1.0.8.0 and couldn't get around to make changes to category.php instead of putting it all in hook (which should be possible), gave up because a quick solution was required then.

So this consists of a hook for categories.php, changes to categories .php and an adapted category_tree.php which is placed in includes/system/override, this one hiding turned off categories for customers but shows them to logged in admins in the backend.

If someone can make use of my humble efforts, I'll hand it over.

Kind regards
Christoph

[BrockleyJohn]

I have an addon which I will aim to bring up to version compatibility and package up asap

[burt]

It's actually quite a difficult request as turning off a category also means;

1. turning off subcategories of that category (and there could be a whole branch of subcategories and subsubcategories etc to turn off)
2. turning all products inside the category and sub and subsub etc inactive.

When you come to turn the category back on, it also needs to inverse the above;

a. turn on any sub and subsub etc categories
b. set products inside back to active

Then another thing to think about is;

You set a product (blue widgets) inactive, as you will not get it back in stock for 6 months.
A month later you set a category inactive => this sets all subcats and products inside inactive. One of the newly inactive categories holds that blue widget product.

So far so good.

A month later, you set the category active. This sets all the subcats and products back to active.

Your blue widget product is now back to active and may not be noticed by you! It's a scenario that might never occur, but I suppose it could.

[raiwa]

It's more complex:
A product can be linked to several categories. If you switch it off when a category is disabled, the product will be disabled also in the categories which are still active.
But if products are not disabled, what happens then for search results, new products page, specials page, direct product access from google results etc?
Maybe an additional check if the product is linked to any active category?

[superche]

It can be very complex, but then again can also be simple. How the store decides to manage it use to up to the store.

Currently, I can choose to set all products in a category to active or inactive, which works for me

Screenshot 2023-05-05 16.43.29.png

But certainly need this feature.