A crucial property of product categories is that they are laid out in a hierarchy, with top-level categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories being possible. This hierarchy lets you classify the products you sell in your web store, so that your users can browse by category. For the cart administrator, both Zen Cart and osCommerce provide admin pages via which you can add, edit and remove categories. However, both systems require a hierarchical navigation through the category structure. Sometimes this makes it difficult to quickly find and update the category you are looking for.

With the new release of ShopAdmin (June 7, 2010), Zen Cart and osCommerce users can now manage category records with the same ShopAdmin interface they use for managing products, manufacturers, customers and orders. This includes finding, filtering, adding and editing categories, searching and filtering. It also includes import (i.e., upload) or update of entire batches of category records into the Zen Cart or osCommerce database. Category information is available via a new menu item under the Product tab.

Apsona addresses this very important feature with ease. The syntax while preparing the CSV for import is: parent category followed by a colon, a space and the sub category. Example, Accessories: Caps. This way there will be no confusion when importing or updating multiple products with the same name but belonging to different categories. Just like all other tables in ShopAdmin, categories and sub categories when imported or updated can also be instantly visible in the Zen Cart and osCommerce databases.

The Apsona team aims to minimise the learning curve and make the user experience seamless and friendly. The beauty of Apsona ShopAdmin is an existing user does not need to do anything when  new features are added. These features will take effect automatically the next time the user reloads Apsona ShopAdmin.

Do try out Apsona ShopAdmin. Data management has never been so easy. Sign up for a free account at apsona.com.

Apsona ShopAdmin for Zen Cart & osCommerce is now two months old, and at Apsona, we could not be happier with the response so far. Zen Cart and osCommerce shop owners have found our product extremely useful for their day to day data management. The testimonials we have been receiving are very positive, and our commitment to Apsona ShopAdmin is stronger than ever. The testimonials and feedback reiterate the fact that an all-in-one mod for import, export, update and reporting of data is just what shop owners need.

As one would expect, we have had our share of teething troubles. We discovered that some hosting services require extra code to handle large data sets, while others have older PHP configurations that needed workarounds in the ShopAdmin code. This has sometimes caused slight problems when Apsona ShopAdmin is first installed. But our tech team has been able to successfully resolve all issues so far. In some cases, we had to use a screen-sharing session over the internet, while others were a simple matter of fixing configurations. In most cases, however, our users have been up and running within minutes of signing up.

We have been regularly enhancing the software with new features. With each enhancement, we send email to our users informing them of the update. Our technology and architecture is such that, invariably, the users need to do nothing more than refreshing their ShopAdmin window for the update to take effect.

Overall, we are very pleased with how things have gone so far, and we have a continuing commitment to maintain and enhance ShopAdmin. We look forward to working with you for many years to come.