I need a hierarchical category structure with drill-down capabilities. I read that subcategories are not supported. I will explain what I need to do. Possibly you can recommend a good approach. If this cannot be done I need another solution. The application is a jewelry store with thousands of items. I would create categories for Gold Jewelry, Amber Jewelry, Men's Jewelry, Women's Jewelry, Necklaces, Rings, etc. (I understand how to create categories and assign products.) When a customer clicks on Gold Jewelry they should see all items in the Gold Jewelry category. (I know how to do this.) On the resulting page there will be links for all subcategories. I understand I can create the single category "Men's Gold Jewelry", and under Manage Products, assign each and every item which belongs here to this category. Because of the number of items, subcategories, sub-sub-categories, etc., assigning each item by hand to every applicable subcategory will be a nightmare, both for initial set-up and for maintenance. It would be much cleaner and maintainable if short-codes were available that could do the equivalent of an SQL sub-query, in order to display the set of items which exist at the intersection of two or more categories. Before you reject this, allow me to explain my capabilities and issues. This is a physical store with a products database. I can write code to pull data from the database and write it to a CSV file (or any other format). The CSV file, or possibly multiple CSV files, can be made to include the category and subcategory information. If I know exactly how eStore needs to see this information represented, possibly an import CSV operation can save me the pain of setting this up, and reduce the maintenance nightmare. I'm using a VPS running Ubuntu where I have full SSH access and root privileges. I can edit and or create any file anywhere on the server. I am new to PHP, Wordpress, and eStore; but, I learn quickly and have a fair set of capabilities. I have tried using Python, Django, and Satchmo (http://www.satchmoproject.com/) to create this store. I had some success but have not finish in time. I need to get something up quickly. I'm doing this for my friend who owns the physical store and is about to go out of business because of the economy. He is praying that a web shop will save him from disaster. (The fact that it may not is something I don't want to think about.) I'm praying for your help. I will do whatever study I need to understand and implement your recommendation without pestering you about every small detail. If it turns out that eStore is not my best choice I will not ask for my money back. If you will work with me to help us solve our problem I'm willing to pay you a consulting fee, even if your recommendation is to use another solution.
Sincerely,
Mark
