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Linking to Different Categories

Jim
Jim
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New to Epi and hoping this is the right place to post my question. I am working at a new company and they adopted Episerver B2B Commerce Version 5.0.8.614 before I started and configured the website product catalog. In the catalog, there are categories, subs and then products like any online catalog has. I am told that when the company moved to B2B Commerce that you could not have a catalog category structure where you can link a subcategory to another category or subcategory. You actually had to DUPLICATE the entire category structure, products and all, into the other subcategory you wanted to have the reference be placed in. While this is not the best catalog structure, I am looking for a possible solution and not rationale why this is not good practice! 

Example: We have a subcategory of Enclosures UNDER a main category of Electrical Supplies (its parent):

We also have a MAIN category of Enclosures that is its own parent.

Currently, we have to actually DUPLICATE the entire category and product structure under the Electrical parent. That is causing issues in reporting if someone wants "enclosure" traffic. We have to pull analytics from the one sub category as well as the main category. Visually, the structure is like this:

We have two different URL's for the two individual categories. Is there a way in the structure to actually show Enclosures in one category (Electrical) but then LINK to the main level 1 Enclosures category so that you have only one category/products to manage? Again, we are reworking the catalog to try and eliminate this non-best practice but believe that the business may want to have some duplicate categories as subs of other categories and looking for the best way to do this.

Want to get to this, where we can link the enclosures category in electrical to the main category/subs/products in its original, single location. 

 

The web and HTML is rooted on hyperlinking structures, so I would be shocked to see an application in 2021 that does not have a simple way to link among page/site elements. Thank you!

#253159
Apr 13, 2021 14:58
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We ran into a similar issue recently when attempting to link new CMS pages on our main navigation drop-down menu to existing category and sub-category pages. 

We ended up having to use 301 redirects (under the Administration menu) for the time being as a temporary solution and created "dummy" URLs in our navigation dropdown that would redirect to the correct category.  We submitted a ticket to and support came back with the same answer.  It's definitley not the "cleanest" solution or even the correct solution, but it works for us for now.  Good luck and welcome to the land of Epi! :)

#253229
Apr 14, 2021 12:09
Jim - Apr 14, 2021 14:57
Appreciate your reply.
Oh boy. Looks like this Land of Epi has a giant pothole on its main road!
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