Question

In the Magento theme I am using there is a left sidebar, on the homepage the sidebar contains a category list but on inner pages (category page, product page, etc) the list isn’t there. How can I replicate this block onto the product and category page so that users can choose a category from anywhere?

Answer 1

You can include the block in the layout(catalog.xml) under the section

1. Product view

  <catalog_product_view translate="label">
  <reference name="left">
    Your block comes here
   </reference>
</catalog_product_view></li>

Category Page

 <catalog_category_default translate="label">
    <reference name="left">
      Your block comes here
    </reference>
   </catalog_category_default></li>

Otherwise just put in the deafult section of the catalog.xml, I am thinking that should also work.

   <default>
     <reference name="left">
      Your block comes here
      </reference>
  </default>

I think the block that ususally displays the left navigation of category is

  <reference name="left">
    <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency"         template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>
    </reference>

Hope this helps you to some extent.
Cheers