Tag Archive for: Dynamic eBay Store Categories

Free Dynamic eBay Store Categories For eBay Listings

Important: This tool has moved to a new home at WidgetChimp.com and is no longer available. If you’re looking for a self-hosted version with more control, see here.

If have been using this, then it will continue to be supported for you as I understand that it may not be possible for you to remove it from your listings easily. It’s been moved so it’s performance can be improved & extra features added in a more user-friendly way.


This is a cool little app that will show your eBay store categories easily and simply in your eBay listings without you needing to update them each time you change them.

What are Dynamic eBay Store Categories?

This really simple to use application will allow you to show your eBay store categories in your eBay listing template and style them as you desire.

This is normally paid addon to custom eBay listing template and eBay shop designs and can cost £99 or more to have it included in you custom design work.

As I found out recently, this could be the only reason why you would want to stop paying a monthly fee to a 3rd party design company just because you can’t carry your shop categories over when you leave and now you can!

The code that powers this application has been coded from scratch and directly integrated into the eBay API. The first time its run, it will take a few moments to process your eBay Store categories and then each view after, your eBay store categories load exceptionally quickly.

An Example

I’ve put an example together for you to see this in action in the link below. The example category tree is quite long, I chose this eBay ID on purpose so that you can see what it looks like over multiple levels and I will be adding the ability to just pick your top categories, level 2 categories or as in this example, all of them if you wish.
http://apps.lastdropofink.co.uk/eBayShopCats/example.html

The eBay Shop categories widget will update every 24 hours automatically, if you add or remove categories from your eBay Shop then your live listings will reflect those changes within a day and you’ll never need to worry about “hard-coding” your eBay shop categories into your listing templates, to only then a few days or weeks later when you change your store categories again.

How to Create Your Dynamic eBay Store Categories

Creating your dynamic eBay store categories is dead easy to do.

Using the form below you can create a simple copy & paste line of code that you can use to show your eBay Store categories in your eBay listings and they dynamically update ever 24 hours. It’s really that simple.

If you’d like to style them to make them look pretty, I have included some custom styles lower down this page so that even if you know nothing about CSS, the sample styles will help you and it’s as easy as copy and paste and if you’re comfortable with CSS or maybe a web-designer then you’ll find the level of CSS class tags that have been included exceptionally versatile.

Steps to make your dynamic eBay categories:

  1. Enter your eBay ID into the form below
  2. Select your default eBay site
  3. Press “Create Categories”
  4. Copy and paste the HTML code into your eBay listing template
  5. Use your own CSS or one of the sample CSS styles below to make your categories look great

This Tool has Moved

This tool has moved to a new home at WidgetChimp.com

Customising Your Dynamic eBay Shop Categories

This is a really simple job if you know CSS and don’t worry if you have no idea what CSS is, because I have included some copy and paste examples for you to use straight away.

Styles:

If you have any custom colour requirements beyond these examples, please see this thread and I’ll update the style library for you.

Advanced Dynamic eBay Shop Categories CSS

This tool was built with designers in mind and each element that this app creates is completely controllable using standard CSS. I also elected to follow the DIV route rather than using unordered lists because they’re far easier to work with when we take multiple browsers into consideration.

If you’re new to designing templates for eBay Shops then the important tit-bit of information you need to know is that each shop category has its own ID number which looks like “2285466014”. The eBay shop categories are created in the users account here and while the users can change the sort ordering in eBay, in the public version of the dynamic eBay categories tool, the categories are sorted alphabetically.

CSS Tags

  • ID: eBayCategories
    This is the main container DIV for the dynamic eBay store categories
  • CLASS: MenuItem
    These are the top-level categories for the eBay store
  • CLASS: MenuSub1Item
  • CLASS: MenuSub2Item
  • CLASS: CatID-NNNNNNNNN
    Each eBay store category has its own number/ID. Use this class to style specific eBay shop categories according to your design requirements

This tool is provided free of charge and all I ask for you to do in return is to press one of the social buttons above and/or let me know of your comments, suggestions or feedback you may have in the forums here.

Stand Alone PHP Version

Due to the feedback already received from the free version, there is now a premium standalone version available that you can host in your own web hosting and comes with more extensive controls, see here for the latest version.

Your Feedback!

This app has been coded from scratch, if you have any comments, suggestions or questions, I’d love to hear from you.

Please use the forums and I’ve created a forum thread especially for this application.