Categories and brands are how shoppers browse, so they deserve more than a text field. In minipim both are real records with their own fields, status and URLs.
A category tree you can rearrange
The Categories page shows your whole tree. Drag a category’s handle to reorder it, and drag left or right while moving to nest or promote it — up to six levels deep. Hover a row for arrow buttons if you’d rather move one step at a time, and rename inline.
Each category has a name, a slug, a status (draft, active or archived) and its own custom fields, defined the same way as product attributes — every category starts with a rich-text description. minipim won’t let you move a category underneath its own children, and deleting a category moves its children up rather than orphaning them.
A product can belong to several categories. For storefronts, the API can return a category’s products including every category beneath it (?categoryId=…&includeDescendants=true), so a “Supplements” page can list everything in “Heart Health” and “Sleep” without extra calls. Content pages use the same tree.
Brands as real records
A brand in minipim isn’t a string on the product — it’s its own record with a name, slug, status and custom fields, so you can keep a brand description and story in one place. Products link to the brand by id, so renaming a brand never breaks anything.
The Brands page lists every brand with its product count. Deleting a brand that still has products asks first, and leaves those products in place, unbranded.
Imported or built by hand
The BigCommerce connector imports your category tree and brands as they are. Everything is also available to a headless storefront by slug.
Good to know
- Categories and brands don’t have image uploads in the admin yet.
- A category’s status doesn’t cascade: hiding a parent doesn’t hide its children.