A family is the folder that versions of one product live in. Three colours of the same notebook are three product codes, each with its own stock. The family holds them together.
The family matters most on your storefront. When you publish, the whole family becomes one listing, and each active product code in it becomes one option the customer picks from.
This page covers:
- Where families come from
- Start a family from a new product
- Pull existing products into a family
- Grouping many at once
Where families come from
You never create an empty family on its own. Every product belongs to one.
When you save a brand-new product from Products → New product, Mossery quietly creates a family for it, named after the product. A product that sits alone like this shows as Individual in the product list. That is normal, and it is still a family. It just has one member.
So "making a family" really means taking one of those one-product families and adding to it.
Start a family from a new product
- Go to Products and click New product. Fill it in and save. This is the first version, for example the blue notebook.
- Open the product. In the Product family box on the right, click Edit family.
- Give the family its real name, the one customers should see. "Starry Dreams Notebook", not "Starry Dreams Notebook – Blue".
- Set the option names: what the versions differ by, such as Colour or Size. A family can have up to three.
- Click Save family.
- Under Products in this family, click Create product for each further version. Each one is created directly inside this family.
Once the versions are in, fill in each product's option value by clicking its cell in the table: Blue, Green, Pink. The option value describes the version and is usually different from the product's name, so set it for each version yourself.
Pull existing products into a family
If the versions already exist as separate products, you do not need to recreate them.
- Open the family you want to keep. Pick the version whose family has the best name, or rename it afterwards.
- Under Products in this family, click Add product.
- Search by product code or name, and tick every product that belongs.
- Click Add products.
A product that already belongs to another family is marked will move from its current family. Adding it moves it, and nothing else about it changes: its stock, cost and history stay exactly as they were. The family it left is simply left empty.
The same move works one product at a time from the product's own page. If a product has no family at all, its Product family box offers Assign to family, where you can search existing families or create a new one by name.
Grouping many at once
For a big regroup, use Import on the Products page. Give every row that belongs together the same family handle. If no family has that handle yet, the import creates one. If one exists, the products are moved into it. Leaving the handle blank takes a product out of its family.
New families start as draft. They become active once published to a storefront, but drafts still appear in the product list, so you can find a new family straight away.
Explore
Publishing. A family goes to your storefront as one listing, with one option per active product code. Learn more →
Types and modes. Each product code in a family keeps its own inventory type and stock mode, so versions can behave differently at zero stock. Learn more →