Show Sub-Categories Directly on Home Page

We are trying to organize our shop with two main categoires PHONES and ACCESSORIES and under those are the sub-categories.

On the main page we would like to display sideboxes that will show the Accessories sub-categories in two different ways.

1. Shop by brand (Motorola, Nokia, Samsung...)

2. Shop by type (Car charger, Faceplates, Batteries...)

An example is this site: http://www.wirelessemporium.com

Can someone help us with the PHP code to create these custom sideboxes; to focus on just a specific sub-category and list those specific variables, clicking on those variables will bring up all products that match.

Thanks.

Reza

See the Parent Categories Separated In 3 sideboxes thread (especially posts 2, 10 & 25) for discussion of this.

You can make categories for each manufacturer and each type, and copy/link the products into those categories.

There is an Expanded Category List mod in Downloads that will display all the subcats at the same time, though it also displays all the products. You would need to apply a patch to stop that, as discussed in the support thread.

The Wireless Emporium site is not actually organized the way you asked for. It does not have "two main categoires PHONES and ACCESSORIES"; the phones are on another site with a link in the header. I believe the accessories are all in top cats for manufacturer and for type, which would eliminate the extra "expanded" process.

...That site is coded in ASP, not PHP, and I don't really know how to interpret the links in the status bar, but I think the site has a fundamental organization that is not possible in Zen Cart without massive rewriting.

There is a manufacturers filter that can be applied in a category display, and it would be possible to add another database field to the products for "type" and replicate the manufacturer filter logic. That would be fairly advanced programming, though.