This article explains how to configure your osCommerce product catalog.

First, log in to your shop's admin area at http://www.yourdomain.com/catalog/admin/ and select Catalog. The first screen, Categories/Products is the main screen to edit the hierarchy of products and categories.

Start by removing the sample products that came with the installation. You can do this by selecting each of the top level categories in turn and selecting delete. It will warn you that you are also deleting sub-categories and products within those categories.

Build your hierarchy of categories by selecting new category. You can add products to a category by selecting new product. Note: categories can contain other sub-categories or products, or products can also be at the top level of the hierarchy.

You can also optionally add translations of your categories and product descriptions in German and Spanish, and users of your catalog can login and choose their language. You can add more language packs by downloading them from the osCommerce site.

For products that have different attributes that you need your customers to select at time of purchase, for example size, colour, etc, you configure this through the Products Attributes menu item.

Again, you may want to delete the example attributes, or use them as appropriate.

The first list, Product Options, is a list of the names of the attributes, eg colour or size.

The second list, Product Values, is a list of all the values that a particular attribute may have, eg colour may have red, white and black and size may have small, medium, large and xl.

The third list ties actual products to options and and values, and also allows different values to have different prices. For example, a t-shirt has size and colour, but xl sized t-shirts may be $2 extra.

Also in this section, you can set up particular Manufacturers, which aids in searching for products. You can also select some of your products to be Specials and show up with a special price. Specials can have set expiry dates so you don't have to remember to login and change pricing back.

The Products Expected allow you to set up products that are not yet available or released but you want customers to be able to search for and pre-order.

Finally, there are several menu items here that allow you to set boilerplate text for your site. You can set text for the Mainpage, for your Shipping and Returns policy, your Privacy Notice and your Conditions of Use.