One thing we needed for our catalogue was a different way of showing categories in the Store app. When a parent category has subcategories, Gridbox lists the products of the whole category tree right away. With our large catalogue, customers find it easier to choose a subcategory first.
To solve this for our own site, I built a small free plugin (GPL) and I’m sharing it with the Balbooa community for free. If you run a shop using Gridbox and have come up against similar problems, you’ve got to give this a go. :)
Better Categories for Gridbox shows the subcategories of the current store category (and of the store home page) above the product list (or elsewhere, depending on the settings), with product counts (or not – the plug is very adjustable). It only adds this block; Gridbox itself isn't modified, and search, filters and pagination work as before.
What it can do:
- Links or tiles: show subcategories as text links or as image tiles in several styles (text below the image, card, text on a gradient, cover).
- Automatic images: use the image set for the category in Gridbox, or else the image of the category's most viewed product.
- Layout: set the position on the page, columns per device (desktop, tablet, phone), direction, spacing, fonts, colours, image shape, shadows and hover effects.
- Optional behaviour: hide the product list until the visitor reaches a last-level category, and show product counts only on the last level.
- Links and counts consistent with Gridbox: it uses Gridbox's own menu and link rules and counts products the same way as your Categories element.
- Live preview in the settings, plus a built-in cache so pages aren't slowed down.
- SEO friendly: Structured data for category list
- Compatibility: built for Joomla 6 and PHP 8.5 and tested with Gridbox 2.20.3.1.
Full description and download:
https://github.com/merserwis/plg_system_bettercategories
Live preview:
https://www.merserwis.pl/oferta
Installation & Package Structure
- Download package from Releases.
- In the Joomla administrator go to System → Install → Extensions and upload the package.
- On a fresh install the plugin is enabled automatically; an update keeps whatever you chose before. If Balbooa Gridbox is not installed, the installer says so in a notice.
- Open Better Categories for Gridbox in the administrator menu (or System → Plugins → System - Better Categories for Gridbox) and adjust the settings.
