Choosing a Product Filtering Strategy in Evolution CMS

Product filtering usually starts with a simple question: should everything live in TVs, or is it worth building a more structured attribute layer? The answer depends mostly on catalog size and how often visitors filter by those values.

When TVs Are Enough

For a small or medium catalog, TVs are often the fastest way to launch. They are easy to edit in the manager and work well with Ditto, DocLister, or custom snippets.

When TVs Become a Problem

If every category needs its own attribute set, the number of TVs grows quickly. At that point filtering gets harder to maintain, and querying by many independent TVs becomes more expensive.

A Balanced Approach

• Use TVs for content-like attributes that editors maintain manually.
• Use a normalized table or helper model for dense product attributes that must be filtered or sorted frequently.
• Keep the mapping between product categories and available filters explicit.

For many shops the best answer is hybrid: TVs for display and editorial convenience, structured storage for high-volume filter logic.