Question

I need to display categories and sub-categories in left side or right side navigation and also display categories in two levels in Magento. Please advise me…..

For example:

categories
    ----sub1
        ---sub2

Answer 1

To add category navigation in left side bar –

create new file “categorymenu.phtml” in your theme at – template\catalog\navigation\categorymenu.phtml

Put the following code in it –

<div class="block block-category">
 <div class="inside-box">
 <div class="block-title block-category-title"><h2><?php echo $this->__('Categories') ?></h2></div>
 <div class="block-category-navigation">
 <ul id="category-nav"> 
 <?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>  
 <?php if($_category->name!=""):  ?>    
 <li><?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?></li> 
 <?php endif?>  
 <?php endforeach ?>    
 </ul>  
 </div> 
 </div> 
</div>

then call this in the catalog.xml file located in the theme folder –

theme\layout\catalog.xml. it looks like :

<reference name="left">

<block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.categorymenu" after="top.search" template="catalog/navigation/categorymenu.phtml"/> <-- this is new block added by us -->

 <block type="core/template" name="left.permanent.callout" template="callouts/left_col.phtml">

...
...
</reference>