adding a new category..getting started

[tribikram]

I am a newbie to this BLC, I downloaded the content and was able to run it. But how do I add a new category? lets say I want to display a new category in coffee item. I added a new category but I could not make it to work? And I have couple of new questions:
1) Is the menu item in the top customizable? how?
2) if I want to display the menu item i.e home , coffee...etc vertically , is it possible? how?
3) If we have any video tutorial or documentations for above things, can I have the link please.
4) Is the home page fully customizable? how?

Thanks,
Tribikram

[jefffischer]

I'm making a couple of assumptions. First, I assume that you're trying to add a new category in the admin tool. For a category to show up, it's not enough to just add it, you also have to make sure its active start and end dates are set and are valid for the current date. Otherwise, broadleaf will consider this category to be inactive and not show it.

Your other questions seem to revolve around how to tweak visual aspects of the home page/menu in the demo. You can certainly do this, but it requires coding knowledge and the ability to edit the jsp page.

1) Yes, you would need to make a code adjustment to a jsp file.
2) You're referring to the breadcrumb. You would have to create your own version of CategoryBreadCrumbTag that emits the categories with HTML that causes them to appear vertically instead of horizontally
3) No video tutorial on this. These are coding exercises - doesn't really lend itself to a video tutorial
4) Yes, you can customize it in whatever way you see fit. The intention of the demo is merely to demonstrate some possibilities of how a Broadleaf Commerce implementation UI might look. Our customers have implemented a myriad of their own user interfaces that match their unique requirements. If you want to tweak the appearance of the demo homepage, then you would need to go into the jsp source and make your changes there.

I think you're driving at a more "canned" UI technology on top of the Broadleaf Commerce engine. It's on our roadmap to provide an out-of-the-box, customizable UI template engine on top of the Broadleaf core for those customers whose customization needs are within a certain scope. However, all customers so far have been employing their own creative (or working with one of our creative partners) to establish a completely unique customer experience. We understand the need for both and are working towards offering the template technology as an additional feature.