Products
Set up a product with its options, variants, prices and links, and get it ready to publish.
A product in Litestore is a single record that holds its options and the variants Litestore generates from them. Use this page when you add something new to sell or change how an existing product is priced, stocked or linked.
Product fields
Each variant has its own price and stock. The product itself also has media, categories and tags, and an optional search-result title and description.
The options you choose determine which variants exist. A shirt that comes in several sizes and colours is still a single product, so you don't have to keep several nearly identical products in sync.
Most of the settings you configure later depend on the options, so it's worth choosing them carefully at the start.
Options and variants
When you pick the options and their values on a product, Litestore generates the variant grid from them.
If you change the values, Litestore regenerates the grid to match. It creates variants the same way whether you're creating the product or editing it later, so an edit can't leave the grid in a state that a new product couldn't have.
Variant price and stock
You set these fields on each variant separately.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| SKU | Identifies the variant. Litestore builds it from the slug and the option values. |
| Stock | Counts how many units are in stock. |
| List price | Sets the normal price. |
| Sale price | Sets a reduced price, with an optional start and end date. |
| Cost | Records what the variant costs the store to buy or make. |
If you leave a variant without a list price, Litestore doesn't create a price row for it. Publishing requires a price on every variant, which means a variant without a price can only exist on an unpublished product.
Out of stock
You configure what happens at zero stock for each variant individually rather than for the whole product.
Stock tracking can be turned off for a variant entirely. If you leave tracking on, you choose whether a sold-out variant blocks add-to-cart and checkout, or remains available as a back-order that ships when you restock.
Publish checks
A product has one of three statuses:
Draft
Published
ArchivedLitestore doesn't schedule products to publish later. It only allows a product to move to Published when it meets five rules, checked in this order:
- It has a category.
- It has at least one image.
- It has at least one variant.
- No two variants share the same option combination.
- Every variant has a price.
If you try to publish a product that breaks a rule, the save is refused with the first rule it fails and the card where you fix it, for example "Product needs an image — add one in the Media card before publishing."
SKUs and slugs cannot be duplicated
Litestore won't accept two products with the same SKU or the same slug, even if they differ only in capitalisation. Litestore builds each SKU from the slug and the option values, and if that SKU is already taken, it generates a new one instead of refusing to save.
Renaming
When you rename a product, Litestore keeps the old slugs and redirects them to the current one. Links that customers have already saved or shared continue to work after the rename.
Related products
The product page shows a You may also like section that Litestore works out by itself: other in-stock products from the same collection or category, never the product itself. There are no hand-made product links, add-ons or cross-sell lists to maintain.
Search title and description
A product's search-result title defaults to its name, and its description to the first 155 or so characters of its description. To override them, use Fill with AI on the product page or ask the assistant to set them.
Media
Media attaches to the product and to each variant. For example, a colour that looks very different from the others can have its own photographs.
Data model
In the database, Litestore stores a product as three kinds of record. Together they hold the product with its options, the variants and each variant's price rows:
Product
ProductVariant
VariantPriceProduct setup
New product
Choose its options and their values.
Variants table
Set the SKU, price and stock on each row.
Remaining fields
Add media, a category and tags. Once the product passes the publish checks, publish it.
Every variant, price, SKU and publish check depends on the options you picked first. If you change the options later, Litestore regenerates the grid along with everything you've set on it.
Related
Collections
Collections differ from categories and tags, come in four types and publish on a schedule.
Inventory
The reorder forecast and the low stock list show what to restock, the reorder point is set per product, and the movements ledger records each stock change.
AI Content
Litestore's AI features turn on with a provider key. Fill with AI drafts a product's description, specifications, tags and search text into the form.