Manage Categories, hierarchy, icons, and Store assignments

Categories are real Store relationships used by search, chips, dropdowns, tiles, grouped lists, shortcode defaults, and marker inheritance. A word in a Store name or description does not make that Store part of a Category.

Create a Category

Open Store Locator → Categories → Add New and configure:

Field	Exact use
Name	Admin label and public Category name
Slug	Stable machine value, initially generated from Name
Parent category	Creates a second hierarchy level beneath an existing Category
Color	Feeds a Category tile design using Automatic background color
Icon Marker	Icon inherited by Stores in Icon-marker mode
HTML Marker Design	Builder marker design inherited in HTML-card mode
Icon	Category icon available to Category tile designs
Order	Numeric public ordering; lower values appear first
Active	Controls whether the Category appears in public Category sources

Use a slug that can remain stable even if the visible name changes. This matters when external integrations retain Category identifiers or administrators recognize records by slug.

Build parent and child Categories

1. Save the parent first, for example Food.
2. Create children such as Pizza, Bakery, and Cafe.
3. Select Food as each child's Parent category.
4. Give parent and children deliberate Order values.

In Categories → stores (drill-down) mode, clicking a parent with children opens its child grid and includes View all. A normal Category dropdown/chip is a filter and does not become this navigation flow automatically.

Attach Categories to Stores

1. Open Store Locator → Stores and edit a Store.
2. In the relationship field, select one or more Categories.
3. Save the Store.

A Store can belong to multiple Categories. After bulk import, edit a sample Store and verify the relationship selector—not merely the CSV text—contains the Category. If selecting a Category returns zero results, this saved relationship is the first thing to check.

Use Categories on the public locator

You can expose Categories in four distinct ways:

• add Category filter to a Layout as chips, dropdown, or tiles;
• add a Category-mapped choice field inside a Search form;
• set Store List to Categories → stores (drill-down);
• preselect one Category in the shortcode or Gutenberg block.

For a visual tile grid, first create Builder → Category tile, then choose that design in the Category-filter or Store-list widget. Category tiles receive Category values such as name, icon, count, and color—not Store address or distance fields.

Category counts and active filters

Public category counts are recalculated against the current radius, keyword, Brand, custom fields, and other active constraints while remaining independent of the Category currently selected. This allows another Category to remain selectable instead of every other count collapsing to zero.

Marker inheritance

Set a Category's Icon Marker or HTML Marker Design, then set each Store to Inherit from category. The Map must use the matching marker type. Resolution is Map override → Store assignment → Category inheritance → global default.

Deactivate versus delete

Deactivate a Category when it should temporarily disappear without removing its record. Before deleting one, check Store relationships, filter layouts, tile navigation, marker inheritance, imports, and any embed using its numeric ID.