Update: Starting fresh on a new day, I noticed this error when I clicked into a category:
Is this indicative that this is just an issue I need to wait for Square to fix? Should I try a different browser? I did indeed try refreshing the page, and the error remained.
Original post
I'm getting so frustrated here. Multiple times I have followed these steps:
- Visit Items & Inventory --> Categories to select the categories I would like to have visible on my website
- Visit the Item Library to then hide the individual items I would like to keep off of my website, for sale at in-person POS only
- Go to Online --> Websites, click through to Publish changes
- View my website in a separate browser only to find... only two of seven categories are there
- Return to Items & Inventory --> Categories only to find that all but two categories have been de-selected
I do not have multiple tabs open for the website editor or the Square dashboard. Admittedly I haven't bothered to try clearing my cache... But why is this happening??? There are some items that I want to keep as exclusive to my in-person market sales. I do not want to have to create a separate category for them as this would slow me down on the POS item selection. All I want to do is to add all 7 of my item categories to my website, and manually deselect a few items from the online shop. This should not be difficult. Am I doing something wrong in the process here???
My site is https://charmandstrangecrochet.square.site/ currently the only category that shows up in the dropdown is Bookmarks, but when you click into the Shop, the lefthand menu magically also shows Wearables. I would like for my 5 other categories to show up in both places but again, I want to be able to hide a few items from each category and every time I do that it seems to delete the whole category from the website!
I have a second problem: a few of the items that I've chosen to hide are actually showing up on my website. I have triple checked that the following options are set: POS is the only channel selected, no fulfillment method has been selected for online orders, and they are set to Hidden from the website. Yet there they are on my Shop All page.
Similarly, some items that I have selected for online sales are not showing up. I've triple checked that the following options are set: POS and online are both selected for channels, fulfillment methods have been set to Shipping, and they are set to Visible on my website. Yet, crickets.
If the answer is "sometimes Square just takes 24 hours to show changes," then Square REALLY needs to get better at this. It is unacceptable that a customer might see an item that I do not wish to sell, or that they might miss an item that I would like to sell, for a full day. If Square expects people to pay for their hosting services, then they really need to get their syncing to within seconds or possibly minutes.
I will stress that my Category visibility issue is NOT simply a sync delay. I make a change on the Dashboard, and then after hitting Publish in the Website Editor, that change is gone from the Dashboard. This is also unacceptable and I need to know this can be fixed!
