Category - Product Reorganization

[Dave224]

I'm thinking about reorganizing categories/subcategories and the products within them. Can anyone provide tips on how to best accomplish the reorganization? Is the best approach to build a new store? Or are there other techniques that hopefully are easier, maybe by editing the products_to_categories, categories, and categories_description tables?

Two of 11 current top level categories need reorganization. The others do not need to be changed. The two top level categories that need reorganization have multiple subcategories. The subcategory titles and the products contained within them will need to change. As an example, the products currently in subcategory A will need to be separated and moved into newly named subcategories A' through say F', etc. The number of subcategories in each reorganized top level category will change from the current number, and the number of products in each subcategory will change, but the products themselves will not be modified, only their location in the category structure. Some of the products have attributes, and the inventory for some of them are tracked by the Products with Attributes Stock (SBA) plugin.

TIA for any tips/advice.

Dave
zc157c, PHP 8.0.2, mysql 8.0, lots of plugins and customization

[lat9]

Are you using an "URL Mangler", e.g. Ceon URI Mappings or Ultimate SEO URLs?

[Dave224]

I am not using a URL mangler.

[lat9]

There's also the URL Redirection Manager (https://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=2152) which, IIRC, needs some work to run under current (i.e. 7.4 and above) versions of PHP, but it might help to get customers who have bookmarked the old product links to a product's new home.