Can I put an item in more than one category?

 

In short, yes! Keep in mind, though, that you may see some unexpected behavior on the website when an item exists in multiple categories. You might notice some strange behavior in:

  • SKU Detail Breadcrumbs - WebAlliance loads only one set of breadcrumbs per item, and if an item exists in multiple categories then its breadcrumbs will reflect only one of those category paths.
  • SKU listings in Row View - Row View "grouping" happens according to the attribute answers for the selected category. But if an item exists in multiple categories, it can potentially have multiple answers for a given attribute. The "Group By" function doesn't really work well in that scenario.
  • Recommended categories in search - WebAlliance Search Preview can recommend categories, based on the user's search input. Search is item-based, though, so if an item exists in multiple places, the user might see unexpected results in the "Suggested Categories" section of the search box. This is true on Search Result pages as well, since WebAlliance lists "Category Group" options based on the search results.
  • Variation Groups - items in multiple categories are not good candidates for use in Variation Groups, for the cross-category reasons mentioned in the other examples.

An item has a maximum number of categories that it may live in based on the category IDs combined together. The total of all category IDs an item exists in may not exceed 4000 characters. This is more than enough for items to live in many categories, but there is eventually a limitation.