Editing the Product

While logged and viewing a product, in the admin toolbar (top of page, black background), there will be a link that reads Edit product. Click this link to start editing the product.

At the top of the form you will find a text box for the product name (here it reads “Cable Cutters”). Below that is a text area for editing the description of the product.

Off to the right and down a bit, you will find a section titled Product categories. Here you can add or change which category the product belongs to.

Also in the right column is a section for the products main image. For the products missing an image, this is were you will add one.

Directly below the product image is the product gallery. This can be used to add additional images to the product.

Back in the left column, if you scroll down from the description you will find a section labeled Product data. This is were we will edit the details for both simple and variable products.

Editing a Simple Product

To start with notice next to Product data is a drop down that in this case reads “Simple product”. The value of this drop down determines if you are working with a simple or variable product.

In the left column of the Product data section you will a list of vertical tabs, starting with General which is the default. This is were you set the price of the product.

If you click on the inventory tab, you will be able to set the SKU for this product.

Also see adding attributes below for adding descriptive attributes like vendor.

Editing a Variable Product

Variable products have two or more variants and attributes are used to differentiate them in the way color and size was used in the t-shirt example. For variable products, data like SKU and price are set for each variant. To start with we will need to define one or more attributes so a customer can choose from the variations. Note when talking about attributes here we are talking about common attributes. Another part of this documentation is about Product Specific Attributes an example of which would be using part number for the attribute since the values are unique to a product.

Adding the Attributes

We start by clicking on the Attributes tab. In this case we already have the vendor attribute. We use the drop down that reads “Custom product attribute” to select which attribute we want to add.

We have selected “Wire Size” and click on “Add” to add wire size to the list of attributes.

Once added a section will be added for the attribute and we need to add the values.

Before adding the values for an attribute lets look at two settings.

• Visible on the product page
• Used for variations

Visible on the product page controls if this attribute shows in the center column of the top row of a product page. If the attribute is used for variations, I recommend unchecking this.

Used for variations determines if this attribute is used in selecting a variation. If not checked it is used to add information like vendor to the product. If checked, the attribute is used to define a variation and used by a customer to select a variation.

We have three ways of adding values to use for the attribute.

• Use the Select all button. This will add add all existing values for the attributes. This will generally be the fastest way for common attributes. When using this approach I recommend removing any values that do no apply to the current product.
• You can type in the text box with “Select terms” to add an a term. Note you need to know the existing values to use this approach.
• Use the Add new button. Values added this way for common attributes will then be available to all products that use the attributes.

For this example I used the Add new button. Clicking this button produces a popup where the new value is filled in and then the OK button is clicked.

After you have added the values, click Save attributes to save the changes/

When adding values for attributes, if the added attribute is used to add descriptive information, only add the value(s) that actually apply to this product.

For attributes add to define variations, while you could leave values that don’t apply, it is recommended only values that are actually used for the product.

Adding the Variations

Once we have added at least one attribute with Used for variation checked we can add the variations. Note for this case were we are reviewing products, the variations generally already exist, and you will be assigning a value from each attribute to each variation.

Click on the Variations tab to see the list of variations. Note when adding a new variable product this list will initially be empty.

In this case we have already filled in the attribute value for the first variation.

When you place your mouse over a variation row, three operations will appear at the end of the row.

• 3 line icon, can be used to reorder the variations using drag and drop
• A down error, that when clicked shows details for the variation
• A remove link to remove the variation. Note this can not be undone. You should not remove discontinued products, see section below.

After clicking the down arrow for a variation we can edit the products details. For the product review we are primarily interested in the SKU and price.

Should a product be discontinued you would uncheck Enabled

Once you have added attribute value(s) for each variation, you will see something like

Wrapping up the Edit

Once you have added missing information and corrected other issues you can save the product.

Toward the top of the right column you will find a section labeled “Publish”.

Click the Update button to save the changes

Note for new products the button will read Publish.

After saving the changes, a View Product link will show above the product name.