It's taken me a bit longer to get to this point. Mainly because my brain just had to defuse somewhat and work on something else.

However, the categories section is now complete as far as I can get it, without the ads work being done yet.

What are categories

The categories are a way for you to essentially group your ads, giving you an easy way to organise stuff on how you see fit. It really is up to you.

The way I see it:

Categories can be anything from sub-categories, within a podcast or feed reader app, or they can be a way to separate your ads to your apps, sites and services

That means, do what suits you best for you scenario. You might have a few websites and apps and you want to separate out on what you want to show on which.

If you have a feed/podcast app you can have different categories according to your own feeds. For example: "Art", "Nature", "ROFL", "David Hasselhoff".

The idea here is that you can target each individual category when calling the API, so only Ads are returned within a given category.

Categories are optional and you don't have to use them if you don't want to. You can be as messy as you want.

Category view and creation

The categories view is super simple for now, with a minimum feature set just to keep true to the MVP idea. This is only a first step of many things I want to do. So if you feel it's lacking... don't worry.

When you first start, you'll see a super simple add button and an explanation what they're all about.

Simple enough.

Pressing "Create new" will take you to the form. It's simple for now.

Give it a name and an optional description. As easy as that. The description is used just for you internally, so you can give yourself a hint of what lies within.

Again, I show a hint of what a category can be.

Once you have added it, it's saved. The category page is updated and you now get a nice list view with a few extra details:

Let's zoom in...

Category list and details view

A nice table with simple info for you. Of note, each category will have an ID associated with it. This is used for the API if you wish to return ads just for that specific one. In the category detail view, shown in a moment, you can select it and copy it quite easily.

So, we have a name, an ID, your description. Then I'll also show how many active ads are tied against the category. They're showing "0" because I need to add the actual ad functionality as my next step hehe.

Next we have a status indicator; you may pause any category. That means it won't return anything from the API. Useful.

Then we have a few action buttons to suit your needs.

Before I move on... everything works on smaller screens too:

Yay!

Tapping on "View" will take you to the detail page. This is still very sparse at the moment, as I need to work on the ad functionality. My plan is to show linked ads and perhaps some basic stats (if enabled).

Here it is:

Tapping the ID will select the whole number so you can easily copy and paste it.

If you have a description that will show underneath... and you will also see the current category status. The edit button takes you to the edit form, similar to the create one… there you’ll also be able to pause it.

Again, that's just real simple but to the point where I want it for now.

Wrapping up

I'm quite happy with this section so far. Now the real works starts with adding the actual Ad functionality to the app.

There are plans to add a bit more flexibility to categories, for example expiry dates and the amount of ads each category can hold. So for example if you want to sell 5 ads per category, you could set that. However, this will be something I add after the initial launch.

Another thing I slowly need to think about is the dashboard and documentation. I made small steps in this area already...