Purpose

This document is a User Guide for Category Banner Slider extension for Magento. It describes how work with the extension.

Banner Slider is a convenient tool to create set of rotating banners for category pages as well as for the main page of the website.

Easy management of the banner sets as well as several beautiful rotating effects for you to select make this module the must-have.

Stress accent to your best products and services, make beautiful banner campaigns for your new products and attract more attention to what you sell.

Installation

All our Magento extensions and templates are installed via IToris Installer.

Download IToris Installer and un-pack to the root of your website. It will then appear in menu System –>IToris extensions –> IToris Installer.

Open it and you will see all our Magento Extensions and Templates, both installed and available. You can install, update and un-install them with one click now.

Find Questions and Answers in the list of extensions and press Install button. It will ask for the license key that you will receive after the purchase. Enter the key and submit. The extension will be installed. It will be available in menu System –>IToris extensions –> Category Banner Slider

License

Banner Slider is website-dependent. By ‘website’ here we understand the website in Magento terms. Under one Magento installation one license key of the extension can activate all stores/storeviews. within one website. If your configuration has several Magento websites - a separate license will be required for each.

You can switch the license from one domain to another – login to IToris website using the credentials you will receive after the purchase. Go to My Downloads area, find your key there and reset it from the current website. Then use it again to activate another website.

The license also includes free life-time updates for the extension.

 

Settings

Install Banner Slider extension and open it in admin area (System –>IToris extensions –> Product Questions/Answers You will see Settings area:

From this page you can enable/disable the extension (temporary disabling is convenient when you work under creation new banner sets).

You can switch the module on/off per store. To do it select the store(s) on the top left, select the state of the module and save the configuration.

One more new area is available in Catalog menu Catalog -> Category Banners.

In this area you can create amd manage sets of banners.

 

Selecting Categories

Category banners are sets of banners that will be displayed on your category pages. N.B. some of your categories may already have a banner. Switch it off in CMS -> Static Blocks if you do not need it.

To create a new set of banners please press ‘Add new Banner Set’ button

You will need to select a store and category to assign banners to it.

Several categories can be selected for the same banner set. In this case they all display the same banners with the same rotation effects.

To add another category press ‘add’ button. There will appear drop downs to select another store and category, etc.

You can remove as well as add new categories for the banners’ set. Pressing ‘show’ icon will open up the category page for you to preview.

 

Banners Configuration

Below the list of categories there is configuration block. The following settings are available:

• Rotation effect - select one of the rotation effects available
• Skin - select the look of the banners’ block
• Enable autorotation - when selected, your banners willl have auto-rotation. Otherwise, customers need to switch them manually
• Width and Height - size of your banners’ block in pixels

The settings will vary the display of the banner set for your customers.

 

List of Banners

To finish creating the set add the banners. Press ‘Browse Files…’ button, select the first banner, press the button again, etc. - until you select all banners for the set.

If you keep all banners in one folder on your local computer - you can select them all together.

Press ‘Upload Files’ button to upload the selected banners.

Once the banners are uploaded you will see addiutional special settings as well as banners’ preview

For each banner the following settings are available:

• Options
  • Image Title - the title will display if this is selected in the settings
  • Image ALT - alt for the banner for better indexing
  • Delay Time (in seconds) - how long the banner should be displayed if there is autorotation selected in settings
  • Link URL - which URL the banner should direct to when clicked
  • Open in - should the page the banner directs to be opened in a new window or the current one
• Order - this is the number (order) of display in the set of banners. You can switch banners’ places by pressing ‘up’ and ‘down’ arrows
• Enabled - only enabled banners will be displayed for the customers
• Action
  • Delete - allows to remove the banner

After the categories have been selected, the settings have been chosen and the banners have been uploaded and set - save the banners’ set.

You can edit it any time. Now when Catalog -> Category Banners are selected you will see all created sets with preview and general information.

 

Main Page Banners

Creating a set of banners for the Main Page is similar to Category pages.

Select Catalog -> Category Banners and press ‘Add new Banners Set’ button. Select a store and Home Page as a category. If the same set of banners should be displayed on all home pages of all stores, select them as well

The rest of the settings are the same - select the preferrable configuration and upload the banners.

After that select CMS -> Pages and find your Home Page in the list. In the content of the Home page add the following block:

{{block type="itoris_categorybannerslider/slider" name="banner_slider" template="itoris/categorybannerslider/home.phtml"}}

 

Front-End. Configuration Effects

When you create a set of banners depending on the selected configuration different display effects will be available.

To see the rotating effects please watch our video presentation. This part will provide a general idea how the look will change depending on the skin selected.

Numbered Pager and Arrows skin

This skin will add paging as well as scrolling arrows.

Titled Pager and Arrows skin

With this skin instead of paging the titles you have entered will be displayed together with the scrolling arrows.

Numbered Pager and Titled Pager skins are the same as above apart from the scrolling arrows that they will not have.

Arrows skin will display scrolling arrows only

No Skin skin will show the banners, no scrolling arrows or paging will be shown.

Please check the rotating effects and visul effects on the video.