Month: August 2017

Creating a product grid for a specific department

NiftyGridZPro allows you to restrict a product grid to products from a specific department. For example, to restrict it to just business cards, you use the shortcode option: department_id="252055618931521092"

Here’s the shortcode used for the grid below:

[niftygridzpro store_or_collection="hightonridley" department_id="252055618931521092" page_size=2]

So the next question is, how do you find out what the department id is for the products you want?

Finding the department id

The answer is that Zazzle provides a utility for it. Follow this link and at the very top of the window you’ll see:

Screenshot showing the location of Zazzle's Department Id finder
Locating Zazzle’s Department Id finder

(I’ve scrolled up a tad so you can see the context)

Just click “select” and keep navigating until you get to the type of product you want:

screenshot of Zazzle's department id tool
Zazzle’s tool for finding a department id

When you click “Done”, you’ll be given the department id – just copy it ready for pasting into your shortcode:

You can stop navigating before you get to a specific type of product and that way you’ll get all product types within the department.

That’s all there is to it.

My newest business card designs

These are my most recent business card designs on Zazzle, pulled live right now from my store. Each has placeholder text for you to personalize to make it your own.
Nothing could be easier, just click the one you like and put your details into the boxes provided.

This post is the one used in the following video about making, uploading and using fallback files.

New facility to test fallback grids

NiftyGridZPro has a feature to ensure that you always have a grid displayed, even if Zazzle’s feed mechanism goes down. A number of such fallback grids are included with your installation and our sister site’s Nifty Promo Control Panel lets you make your own so you have full flexibility on what’s displayed (see the FAQ for more on this).

Of course, you need a way to make sure that they’re working ok and this post shows you how to make sure they are. It’s all spelled out in the FAQ but let’s run through it here.

  • By default, one with a filename of backup-file2-birthday6.html is used – unless you give a different filename in your shortcode options.
  • It’s easy to test that the fallback grid shows up and is as you expect. Just include this special shortcode: mimic_zazzle_down=1. Again, simply preview it to see the fallback grid in place. Don’t forget to take it out when you’re happy with the result!

Here’s the shortcode for the grid below:
[niftygridzpro store_or_collection="hightonridley" associate_id="238582202591969585" mimic_zazzle_down=1]

The only thing to watch out for with the fallback grid is to make sure that none of the products in it on Zazzle get hidden or deleted – if they do, you’ll get broken links. You can best do this by using your own products and then you’re in control.