Improve store page to display selected product categories below the banner and above products

[bobbingwide]

In #47 we added a banner image to be displayed above the product grid.

The new requirement is to be able to display a selection of product categories as found on many other WooCommerce sites.

Requirement

• Display 8 selected product categories
• Use a grid structure with the same dimensions as for the individual products

Proposed solution

• [x] Initially use the [product_categories] shortcode with the 8 category IDs coded into the shortcode in the store page's content
• [x] Improve the solution to display the product categories which have been marked as a Popular category to be included on the store front page. This solution will not require editing of the shortcode, the IDs will be determined automatically.

[bobbingwide]

This is a screen capture from the prototype using the following shortcode.

[product_categories ids=119,168,381,100,]

[bobbingwide]

In my local environment there are 25 categories marked as popular_category

SELECT count(*), meta_value FROM `vgcwp_termmeta` where meta_key = 'popular_category' group by meta_value;

They can all be turned off.

update `vgcwp_termmeta` set meta_value = 0 where meta_key = 'popular_category' and meta_value = 1;

But this caused the vgc_get_popular_categories() to return an empty array, which needs to be catered for in vgc_display_popular_categories().

[bobbingwide]

The IDs for the popular categories to be included are:

Category	ID
Sheds	15
Summerhouses	168
Greenhouses	78
Garden office	23
Lugarde log cabins & home office	79
Workshop	80
Glass rooms, gazebos & verandas	81
Garden tidies & bikes stores	82

These can be updated using the following SQL.

update `vgcwp_termmeta` set meta_value = 1 where meta_key = 'popular_category' and term_id in ( 15, 168, 78, 23, 79, 80, 81, 82 );

Each of these product categories already have an associated image.

[bobbingwide]

In my local environment there are 25 categories marked as popular_category

Ditto for Live

They can all be turned off.

Ditto for Live

The product categories to be displayed in the store page have been updated using the same SQL as above. There are now 8 popular categories and 378 others

[bobbingwide]

Delivered in v1.5.0