Highlighting categories help

My website has a lot of sub categories.
When a user goes to place an ad and needs to choose what category best relates to their item - I'm finding they get confused sometimes.

Is there a way to highlight the background of certain categories in the drop down menu when placing an ad?

Thank you!

Unfortunately people will always be confused regardless of how you have things setup. I regularly re-categorize ads...even with extremely simple categories

You could add a parent class to your select dropdown and then style it however you like...maybe a consideration:

Code:

<option {if $cat.parent_id == 0}class="parent" {/if}value="{$cat.id}"{if $category==$cat.id} selected="selected"{/if}>{$cat.name}</option>

Thank you, I will definitely try it.

Just so I avoid spending countless time with trial and error - where should I place this code?
Thank you again and apologies!

You should find this in the checkout/step1.tpl of your current template.