Magento products will not show in category

Question

I've recently been tasked with the build and deployment of a large Ecommerce site. In the past we've had to use the clients legacy X-cart installation for redevelopment (too far integrated with their existing work flow).

We'd heard good things about Magento, so I've set up a test install to get to grips with it. After a couple of initial issues, there is a live development site which displays categories on the default theme. The problem we've hit now is that products don't display..!

After a lot more in-depth research into this, all I've been able to discover is that quite a number of developers endorse using other solutions entirely, with the other 50% saying after the steep learning curve the platform is as wonderful as we'd initially been led to believe.

Now, my test category is showing, so I know this is configured properly. I've set up three test products and associated them with this (all done following the Magento user guide), checked double checked and thrice checked the products are enabled and visible individually, yet still the front end says the category has no products in it. I've cleared the cache repeatedly, reset everything possible many times in index management - no products show up.

I have to make a call tomorrow morning on whether we're going ahead with Magento. If I can't even get it to show products I'm going to have to go with something with a more established track record and more community support available. Can anybody advise what could possibly be wrong here?

Answer 1

Check your product stock management options, in the default config items out of stock are not being displayed.

Answer 2

The checklist for whether items are in stock follows. Some will seem stupid until the first time you spend an hour trying to figure this problem out:

1. The products must be Visible in Catalog.
2. The products must be Enabled.
3. Product must have a stock Quantity.
4. The product must be set to In Stock.
5. If the product is set not to track stock, it still has to have a stock Quantity and be set to In Stock.
6. The product must be assigned to the target Category.
7. If using multi-website mode (or if you imported the products through Data Flow), the products must be assigned to the target Website.
8. You must refresh your Cache / Indices, just to make sure.

Welcome to Magento. Hope that helps!

Joe

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EDIT:

I also wrote a blog post and a community extension for this same problem.

Answer 3

I would also add: make sure for the category under the Display Settings tab, the Display Mode is set to "Products Only" or "Static blocks and products". If this is set to "Static block only", the products will not display for the category.

Answer 4

Hi, This worked for me thanks - Basically a schoolboy error - As per point 7 above, have a multistore website and did not have the products assigned to the new website.

The problem I now have is I have hundreds if not thousands of products I want to add to this new URL/website - Is there a way of assigning these quickly without having to go to every product and clicking on the new website checkbox. - (Im guessing your are going to say dataflow import and 1.4.1 is having huge problems wth this :) )

thanks in advance.