Adding products

Create a category first

Every product belongs to a category. Go to Solidshop → Categories to create your first category (e.g. “T-Shirts”, “Electronics”, or just “General”). Categories can be nested to any depth.

Solidshop uses Joomla’s built-in category system (com_categories). If you are familiar with Joomla articles, creating product categories works exactly the same way.

Create a product

Navigate to Solidshop → Products → New. The product form has several sections:

Basic details

  • Name — the product title shown to customers
  • Alias — auto-generated from the name, used in the URL
  • Category — select the category you created
  • Product type — “Physical” for tangible goods (other types are available via add-on plugins — Downloadable is free; Service and Subscription will be available soon). When creating a product you pick the type from a set of cards; on saved products it becomes a dropdown. Changing the type reloads the form so only the tabs relevant to that type are shown — for example, Downloadable products get a Downloads tab and no Shipping tab. Your unsaved edits are kept across the reload.
  • Brand — optional, you can create new brands inline
  • Summary — a short description shown in product listings
  • Description — the full product description with rich text formatting
  • Tags — free-form tags for filtering and search

Media

Drag and drop product images, videos, or 3D models straight onto the media area, or browse and upload them through the built-in media manager. Solidshop automatically generates thumbnails at four sizes (small 150px, medium 356px, large 800px, and extra-large 2000px). You can configure these sizes and the aspect ratio (square, portrait, landscape, or original) in the component settings.

Pricing

  • Price — the selling price
  • Original price — optional “was” price shown as a strikethrough
  • Cost per item — your cost, used for profit reporting (never shown to customers)
  • Tax class — which tax class applies to this product, or use the store default

Inventory

  • SKU — stock-keeping unit for your internal tracking
  • Barcode — optional UPC/EAN
  • Track quantity — enable to manage stock levels; Solidshop will prevent overselling. Defaults to on for Physical products and off for types without physical stock (Downloadable, Service, Subscription, Virtual) — you can still enable it on any type, e.g. a service with limited seats
  • Quantity — current stock count (only shown when tracking is enabled)

Shipping

This tab only appears for product types that ship (Physical).

  • Weight — product weight in your store’s configured unit (kg or g), used for shipping rate calculations

SEO

  • Meta description — the search engine snippet (max 160 characters)
  • Page title — custom browser title (max 70 characters), with a live preview of how the result appears in a search engine listing

Publishing

  • Status — Published, Unpublished, Archived, or Trashed
  • Publish up / down — schedule when the product becomes visible

Options & variants

If your product comes in multiple versions (sizes, colours, materials), use the Options section of the product form.

  1. Add an option (e.g. “Size”) and define its values (e.g. S, M, L, XL).
  2. Add more options if needed (e.g. “Colour” with values Red, Blue, Black).
  3. Tick Generate variants and save — Solidshop creates all combinations automatically (e.g. “S / Red”, “S / Blue”, “M / Red”, etc.).
  4. Each variant can override the parent product’s price, SKU, barcode, weight, and stock quantity.