Purpose

This document is a User Guide for Layered Navigation extension for Magento. It describes how work with the extension.

This module substitutes standard Magento layered navigation, providing more abilities for customers to sort out the products they need, as well as a more comprehensive logic of search and sorting.

System Requirements

The extension works under Magento from 1.4.x and higher.

The extension works with Apache 1.3.x and higher, PHP 5, Linux or IIS.

The extension’s correct work is guaranteed with the following browsers:

• IE7, IE8, IE9
• FireFox 4.x, 5.x
• Google Chrome 15.x
• Safari 5.x

The correct work with other Magento versions, other browsers and Apache/PHP versions is not guaranteed.

Installation

All our Magento extensions and templates are installed via IToris Installer.

Download IToris Installer and un-pack to the root of your website. It will then appear in menu System –>IToris extensions –> IToris Installer.

Open it and you will see all our Magento Extensions and Templates, both installed and available. You can install, update and un-install them with one click now.

Find Layered Navigation in the list of extensions and press Install button. It will ask for the license key that you will receive after the purchase. Enter the key and submit. The extension will be installed. It will be available in menu System –>IToris extensions –> Layered Navigation

License

Layered Navigation extension is website-dependent. By ‘website’ here we understand the website in Magento terms. Under one Magento installation one license key of the extension can activate all stores/storeviews. within one website. If your configuration has several Magento websites - a separate license will be required for each.

You can switch the license from one domain to another – login to IToris website using the credentials you will receive after the purchase. Go to My Downloads area, find your key there and reset it from the current website. Then use it again to activate another website.

The license also includes free life-time updates for the extension.

Settings

General Settings

Install Layered Navigation and open it in admin area (System –>IToris extensions –> Layered Navigation You will see Settings area.

After any changes have been applied, settings need to be saved.

In order to enable the module for the front-end select Extension Enabled = Yes. This will substitute standard Magento registration form with your custom one.

Current Configuration Scope on the left allows enabling or disabling the module for selected stores only.

Multi-category mode setting switches off not only the categories, yet all their sub-categories as selectable options. So customers can check several categories and sub-categories to select products from.

Graphical price range converts standard price boxes into scrollbars, so that customers can set the boundary values for the price they prefer.

Languages’ Settings

Different languages can be used for different stores in the module. By defaults the module is provided in English. To translate it for stores please open app/locale/en_En in your Magento and find Itoris_LayeredNavigation.csv file there.

Copy the file to the locale you need and open the copy for editing.

The file will contain each phrase twice. Translate the second part of each phrase and save the changes.

Features of Layered Navigation

Multi-categories

Standard Magento layered navigation displays categories as links, no sub-categories are displayed. It means that customers can select one category only, and search products only inside this category.

Layered Navigation module provides each category and sub-category with checkboxes. So now customers can select which categories and/or sub-categories to be included in the search, and can search in the selected categories together

To display categories and sub-categories as selectable options you will need to activate Multi-category mode setting

Features of Layered Navigation

Visual Price Scrollbar

Default Magento layered navigation allows customers to enter the price boundaries in boxes. Layered Navigation module provides ability to display price as scrollable bars, so that the customers set the boundary values and the search is applied within these values.

To activate visual price scrollbars use Graphical Price Range setting.

Features of Layered Navigation

SEO- and human-friendly URLs

Layered Navigation uses forms special ULRs. They are at the same time SEO- and human-friendly.

SEO-friendly - all products within each category/sub-category will be indexed by search engines, thus providing a better search optimization, more inner links to the products and better positions in the displayed results of search engines (Google, etc.)

Human-friendly - all selected options and parameters are saved in the URLs. So your customers can copy the URL and save it together with all options selected and resulted list of products. They can also email the URL with all selections to their friends. Search engines will not index the part of the URL where selected options are kept.

Easy Management of Search Options

There are three convenient abilities for customers to manage their search options:

Collapsing/expanding of options’ blocks Each block in Layered Navigation can be collapsed or expanded for convenient search:

Clear all - as soon as an option has been selected there appears Clear All button. It clears all selected options so that the customers can start their search from scratch.

Clear a block - customers can clear only one or several search blocks, so that the rest of options stay selected. There is a cross icon at the top right of each block to clear it.

Intellectual Search Logic

Layered Navigation module uses intellectual logic for searching the products as well as displaying options. There will never be “No Results Found” page, as depending on the previous selection the further options are displayed only if they are available within the previous selection. Otherwise they will be hidden.

For example:

Initially we see 3 colors in Color block - brown, black and silver. Yet as soon as we select Cell Phones category, only 2 colors are now displayed, as there are no brown cell phones available.

Depending on the selected options customers will always see the new ones so that there are products to be displayed.

One more feature is that Layered Navigation module predefines search depending on what is more important for customers.

For example if a customer starts selecting from categories, that colors will disappear if there are no such colors in selected categories, yet all categories will be displayed. But if a customer starts from colors, then all colors will be displayed yet some categories can disappear.

In the first case categories are more important, while in the second case colors are more important.

Options selected to be kept

If a customer selects options, e.g. price range or colors, and then goes deeper in a sub-category, all selected options will be kept and applied to the sub-category.

For example, if a customer has selected computers, then set price range from $1000 to $2000 and then narrowed the search by selecting laptops subcategory - laptops will be search only within the set price range.

Your customers will not lose their options each time they narrow their search selecting categories and/or sub-categories.