Saturday 6 August 2016

Enhanced category handling for Nifty Slideshows

While I was making slideshows earlier today, I came across a sort-of limitation with using store categories.
I was building slideshows of the collections that Children's Illustrators have put in their Zazzle stores and sharing them on Pinterest. I then came across one who didn't use collections but instead used categories.
Ok, no worries, just use the category feature of Nifty Slideshows. But then I got to thinking about the guided search option - the one where the search terms are used for guiding subsequent searches.

Searches were confined to original category

The way I had it, any search done would be confined to searching in that category. For categories with few designs in them, that would be a terrible experience for any visitor - and no way out for them.

Categories now work like this

So I decided the best bet when using store categories (marketplace, too) would be to:
  • ignore the given category entirely for the guided search, but
  • give a direct link under the search to take the visitor to that category
I think that gives the best flexibility to storekeepers making Nifty Slideshows and visitors using them, so that's how they now work.

Thie is one further refinement I may look at in fututre and that's to make marketplace categories behave as originally - because there will be many thousands of designs in them and so not the issue that store categories have.