Moving categories section into left nav bar

[taxicat +]

I have v4.1.6 Designer and using a modified version of the 'default' template. I am trying to move the "Browse categories" section from the main body of the home page into the left hand nav column so that it will appear on every page. Now this works fine on the home page and displays correctly, but as soon as you go to any other page it no longer displays. Any ideas?

[Lhotch +]

categories in 68C are dynamic and not static text. They are stored in a database and in turn have to be pulled from the database to be displayed. The home pages underlying php script does this and in turn the smarty vars are there for you to use off to the side.

However, not all pages need to display categories and in turn they are not pulled from the database and thus you cant display them because they dont exist on that page.

Your best bet would be to create a plugin to collect the categories and call that plugin on the layout.tpl template so it will be available on all pages.

[michael +]

Try this;

<h1>Main Categories</h1>
<div class="left-box">
<ul class="sidemenu">
{categories_parent}
{foreach from=$pcat item=entry}
<li>{$entry.link}</li>
{/foreach}
</ul>
</div>

[Lhotch +]

Good catch Michael, I forgot about that plugin.

[taxicat +]

Lads, I do believe you are brilliant. Thanks for the code.
1 more thing - what do I add if I want to also have the category image included?

[michael +]

Hmmm. If it's the usual 'bullet point' image - - that's controlled by your CSS and should automatically appear as you are using an unordered list (I think).

If it's custom category images you're after the perhaps someone a bit more knowledgeable may be able to help.

Mike.