Listing categories allow providers to classify their products, services, rentals, profiles, or offerings when posting to your marketplace. These categories can be used as search filters that customers use to find listings and displayed on the listing search page.
The Sharetribe Console supports creating three levels of categories. Each main category can contain a group of subcategories, each of which can contain its own set of subcategories.
How to add a main category
In Console, go to Build>Listings>Listing categories, and click on "+ Add a new main category". When creating the category, you need to set the category name and the category ID.
Category name: The name of the category is visible to users on your marketplace in the listing creation form and can be used as a filter on the search page.
Category ID: The unique identifier of the category. Once created, it cannot be changed, but it will not be shown to users.
How to add a subcategory
In Console, go to Build>Listings>Listing categories, click on a main category and click on "+ Add a new subcategory". When creating the subcategory, you need to set the subcategory name and the subcategory ID.
Subcategory name: The name of the subcategory is visible to users on your marketplace in the listing creation form and can be used as a filter on the search page.
Subcategory ID: The unique identifier of the subcategory. Once created, it cannot be changed, but it will not be shown to users.
How to add a subcategory in a subcategory
In Console, go to Build>Listings>Listing categories, click on a main category, then select a subcategory and click on the first "+ Add a new subcategory" text to create a further subcategory within it. You need to set the subcategory name and the subcategory ID.
Subcategory name: The name of the subcategory is visible to users on your marketplace in the listing creation form and can be used as a filter on the search page.
Subcategory ID: The unique identifier of the subcategory, not shown to end users.
How to enable a category search
In Console, go to Build>Listings>Listing search, and enable the "Let users filter search results by category" checkbox.
What happens if you edit a category or subcategory
When you edit an existing category or subcategory in Console, the original version will no longer be visible on the marketplace listing search page or during the listing creation process for providers. However, listings that were categorized under the old category or subcategory will retain the previous information. To align these listings with the updated categories, you will need to manually update each listing to incorporate the new category or subcategory changes. You can modify a listing using the login as user feature.
Limit custom listing fields to certain categories and subcategories
When creating custom listing fields, you can limit them to a category or multiple categories. Listing fields limited to a category are only filled for listings created in that category. Similarly, listing fields limited to a category appear when a user filters based on the category; other filters are hidden.