Always expand categories?

Hello all,

I doing a little updating to my site and I need some help. In the past whenever there wasn't anything I could figure out I just removed the zen functions and hard coded everything. I did this for my left column that contained all the links to my product categories.

I did this because I need all the categories to be expanded at all times. I'm pretty sure there has to be an easy way to accomplish this but I have yet to find it. If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you,
mdk

Ok I'm doing a bit of digging to see if I can figure this out on my own. So far I am overriding categories.php and tpl_categories.php.

categoies.php loads all the top-level cats into an array and then tpl_categories outputs this array.

When you enter a category page does it use a different sidebox to display the categories?

Ok it appears that the array which holds the categories is a different size depending upon which page you are on. Although it appears that the database call is the same for each page.

There must be something else going on with the db.

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_52&products_id=392&zenid=ce06809388104fecc24a1de18512f704

This may be what you are looking for.

I believe that mod doesn't show the expanded category list correctly.

See this thread: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63034&highlight=categories+expanded

Here is the correct link we used to have cats and sub cats expanded on all pages.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=282579&postcount=17

Ok, I've tried the ch_category mod and it does seem to work fine. Someone just posted recently describing how it wasn't creating the tree correctly, but I don't see a problem.

I have more items in the Documents menu that also need to be expanded, so it looks like I'll need another class file and sidebox menu file. So hopefully I can figure out how to modify a copy of t to pull the products that would normally display in the documents menu, the same way ch_category pulls the products that are normally displayed in the categories menu.

I know this thread is 3 years old, but it's exactly what I am looking for and I can't seem to find any info on how to get the documents categories expanded.

I actually JUST found out how to do this myself.

1. I Duplicated the files that came with ch_categories. I just named them:
   ch_categories_tree_generator2.php
   ch_categories2.php

2. I opened up ch_categories_tree_generator2.php and changed the first line

class ch_category_tree

to

class ch2 _category_tree

[the part in red is what I added.]

3. Then I opened ch_categories2.php. Found around the 3rd line:

$main_category_tree = new ch_category_tree;

and changed it to:

$main_category_tree = new ch2_category_tree;

Then I found my new sidebox in Admin->Layout Boxes Controller. [It was named ch_categories2.php if]

Finally the Document Categories Expanded to show subcategories.