PHP Product Catalog Script

A PHP product catalog script displays categories, product pages, filters, and prices. If you add a cart and payment, you are already in online store territory. Without that, it is a showcase: useful for price lists, dealers, B2B quotes, and request-based pricing.

Briefs often confuse the two. Build the showcase cleanly first, then upgrade to a store only when orders must live inside the system.

Showcase Minimum

• A category tree with clean URLs.
• A product page: name, price or request-based price, photos, description, and SKU.
• Listings with pagination and sorting by price or newest items.
• Filters that do not crash on empty results.
• Search by name and SKU without full scans on large tables.

A permanent product URL is required because managers send it to customers. Broken links after renaming are handled with slug plus id or redirects.

Filters: Boring but Correct

Start with:

1. Price from/to.
2. Availability: in stock or on order.
3. Two or three niche attributes such as brand, material, or power.

Do not place forty checkboxes on a category with three products. An empty result is a normal screen with reset options, not a 500 error. If attributes live on SKUs, see product variants.

The Product Page for Managers

From a phone, a manager must see price, availability, SKU, and the action button: add to cart, request an invoice, or write a message. Related products below the page work better than a full-width promotion banner. Hide long specification tables in tabs.

When a Catalog Is Enough

• A wholesale price list with negotiated pricing.
• A product-line presentation before a manager call.
• A private dealer portal with authentication.
• Logistics and payments still happen in accounting software or manual invoices.

When managers drown in chat reservations, you need orders in the system: cart, checkout, and statuses. See store and checkout.

Catalog Admin Without Surprises

1. Bulk editing of prices and stock by CSV or table.
2. Draft products are not visible on the site.
3. Deleting a category warns or moves products instead of silently breaking them.
4. Price-change history records who changed what.
5. Batch photo import into product pages.

A single product-level stock value lies as soon as sizes exist. Use SKU-level stock for variants.

Performance and Cache

Listings benefit from page or query cache. Reset category cache after price changes. Serve thumbnails, not 4000px originals. On shared hosting, watch inode limits when photos grow.

Connection to Full Ecommerce

The catalog is the foundation. A hosted ecommerce script is reviewed at ecommerce. Shipping and payment come after the showcase is stable: shipping, YooKassa, promo codes.

SEO and Manager-Friendly Pages

Title and H1 should match the product meaning, not spam keywords. Use facts and application notes, not keyword stuffing. Show SKU and availability without scrolling. For B2B, add minimum batch and package-multiple fields even before checkout exists.

• Old slugs should redirect, not pretend nothing happened.
• Out-of-stock pages should remain open with a changed action button.
• PDF price lists must come from the same data as the showcase.

Import and Data Discipline

Catalog pain usually starts with messy CSV files. Fix import rules:

1. SKU is the unique key.
2. Prices use one decimal format.
3. Categories are matched by id or path, not by similar names.
4. An empty stock cell does not mean zero unless agreed.

Run a dry import on a database copy. After production import, manually review several product pages and one filtered listing.

Access Rights

B2B catalogs often require login and dealer-specific price columns. Make sure guests cannot see wholesale data in HTML or search JSON. Page cache for authenticated users must be handled carefully; it is easy to leak another customer's price.

Empty States and Search

The no-results screen should offer filter reset and a parent category link. SKU search is sacred for managers and repeat buyers. Keep suggestions modest, with debounce and 5-8 items. A fast, honest catalog makes the later cart upgrade smoother.