Easy Collections
The Easy Collections feature enables you to create collections for each vendor and product type. There are a number of advantages in doing this including:
Creating search engine and user-friendly URLs, instead of mywebsite.com/collections/vendors?q=oakley, you can have mywebsite.com/collections/oakley, which is shorter, more readable and uses simple characters.
Improving SEO by allowing each vendor or product type to have an image and description
Improve user experience by showing the brand logo for a vendor
Ability to change the sort order for differing vendors or product types
Vendor Collections
To create a collection for each vendor go to the Easy Collections link and tick the Create Vendor Collections option.
Product Type Collections
To create a collection for each product type go to the Easy Collections link and tick the Create Product Type Collections option.
Creating a menu for each vendor and product type
Often you would want to list each vendor in a menu, and likewise with each product type. Shopify allows this using the {% shop.vendors %} list and the {% shop.type %} list, however, the links created using link_to_vendor and link_to_type will still point to the old method.
The fix requires some code change in your theme, but this is quite straightforward.
A basic version to list all the vendor collections in a list is as follows:
<ul>
{% for product_type in shop.types %}
{% assign type_handle = product_type | handleize %}
{% assign type_collection = collections[type_handle] %}
<li class="{% if product.type == product_type %}current{% endif %}">
{% if type_collection == empty %}{{ product_type | link_to_type }}
{% else %}{{ type_collection.title | link_to: type_collection.url }}
{% endif %}
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
A more complex version, showing the collection count, marking of the last collection, and if the current collection intersects with the type collection, is as follows:
<ul>
{% assign all_type_list = (collection.all_types | join: ', ' ) %}
{% for product_type in shop.types %}
{% assign type_handle = product_type | handleize %}
{% assign type_collection = collections[type_handle] %}
<li class="{% if all_options and all_type_list contains product_type %}active{% endif %} {% if product.type == product_type %}current{% endif %} {% if forloop.last %}last{% endif %}">
{% if type_collection == empty %}{{ product_type | link_to_type }}
{% else %}{{ type_collection.title | link_to: type_collection.url }}
{% endif %}
<span class="collection-count">({{ type_collection.all_products_count }})</span>
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Similarly to list each of the vendors:
<ul>
{% for product_vendor in shop.vendors %}
{% assign vendor_handle = product_vendor | handleize %}
{% assign vendor_collection = collections[vendor_handle] %}
<li class="{% if product.vendor == product_vendor %}current{% endif %}">
{% if vendor_collection == empty %}{{ product_vendor | link_to_vendor }}
{% else %}{{ vendor_collection.title | link_to: vendor_collection.url }}
{% endif %}
</li>
{% endfor %}
</ul>
Customizing the sort order
The code above will list the vendor and type collections in alphabetical order. If you wish to change that you have to use a link list and manually link to each collection due to a limitation in the Shopify API.
If you have any additional questions, please contact support through the live chat in the app, or at support@powertoolsapp.com