The top 3 solutions to this in my experience are:

1. The categories not added as sub-categories of the Default, Root category.
2. The Magento store configuration has no default category set.
3. The category cache requires a refresh.

I’ll cover each of these points in more detail with screenshots, so that if you are having trouble with your categories not showing up you can hopefully solve the problem.

Categories must be sub-categories of the default (root) category

This one seems to catch most new Magento users, basically all new categories you add to your store should be children of your default category. If you accidentally delete your default root category, then you need to make a new default category that can be the root category of all your other store categories.

The screenshot below illustrates this configuration as it appears in the administration interface. Be sure to check the lines that connect you new categories with your original default category, they should show as sub-categories and be indented accordingly.

Ths screenshot shows the Default Root category as the parent of all new store categories.

The reason for this notion of root categories is so that you can have entirely parallel category structures, made up of products from a shared inventory. These parallel category hierarchies can then be used for different store fronts. Each store has it’s own root category. What a pertinent segue into our next section…

Default (root) category must be specified for your Store

If you get a bit eager with your Magento store configuration and end up deleting the default root category, never fear, you can simply make a new Root category using the menu option. However you may also then need to re-associate that category with your default store (or any other store for which that category was the root). To do this you go the System > Manage Stores menu and drill-down to the Edit store screen as shown below.

This screenshot shows the Edit Store screen (accessed via the System -> Manage Stores menu). The Edit Store screen is where you configure your default root category.

If your root category is not set, then you simply select your root category from the drop down and save the configuration. You should now be able to see your categories on your Magento store front.

Category cache may require a refresh

If you are still reading, things are getting a little grim I’m afraid. This solution is seldom required, and in turn, is rarely the solution. However, it’s worth a try right, otherwise you’ll end up kissing goodbye the next 30 minutes while you trawl the internet and the Magento forums searching for some other obscure solution.

Access the Cache Management screen (System > Cache Management) and tick all the boxes (for good measure), yes even the one labelled ‘beta’. Then choose Refresh from the drop down and save. You can see this in the screenshot below.

Tick all the boxes and refresh the Magento cache.

Also one last thing, try refreshing the layered navigation too, this is a button further down the Cache Management screen, shown below.

One last thing to try: refresh the layered navigation cache.

If all of these options have failed you and you still cannot see your Magento store categories, the please post below and we can try and solve the problem together. Hopefully we can add any of the obscure reasons for failure and save others struggling with this frustrating initial hurdle to Magento installation and configuration.

From Aschroder.com

Related posts:

1. Magento Vertical Category Menu
2. Tips For Creating Dynamic Category Landing Pages
3. Custom Category Images Listing Block Tutorial

Magento Vertical Menu using Peter Hamilton’s code

In one of our premium Magento themes we implemented a vertical category menu with the code adapted from this thread. It’s quite easy to implement and to make it even easier for others, we decided to write a step by step tutorial.

• Add a new block type in “catalog.xml” file
• Create a new phtml file and name it “leftnav.phtml”, place it inside catalog/navigation
• Edit CSS

Add a new block type in “catalog.xml” file

Here we presume you want to have the vertical category menu shows up on every page, to do so, we will place the code in the <default> layout like so, and we want it to always stay on the top, so we added “before=”-”:

<default>
<!-- Mage_Catalog -->
<reference name="right">
<block type="catalog/navigation"before="-"
name="leftNav" as="leftNav" template="catalog/navigation/leftnav.phtml"/>
</reference>

You can change the reference name from ‘right’ to left if you prefer to have the vertical menu placed on the left column.

Create a leftnav.phtml file

This code is copied directly from the above mention thread posted by Peter Hamilton on #63 with a bit of modification to fix the validation error.:

<div class="sidebox">
<h6>Browse Category</h6>
<ul id="side-nav">
<?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
<?php if ($_category->getIsActive()) { ?>
<?php $open = $this->isCategoryActive($_category); ?>
<?php $potential = $_category->hasChildren(); ?>
<li class="subcat"><a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($_category); ?>"<?php if($open) { echo ' class="open"'; } ?><?php if($potential) { echo ' class="potential"'; } ?> ><?php echo $_category->getName();?></a>
<?php if ($open && $potential): ?>
<ul id="sub-sidenav">
<?php foreach ($_category->getChildrenCategories() as $subcategory): ?>
<?php $subCat = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($subcategory); ?>
<?php $open = $this->isCategoryActive($subCat); ?>
<?php $potential = $subCat->hasChildren(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($subCat); ?>"<?php if($open) { echo ' class="subopen"'; } ?><?php if(!$potential&&$open) { echo ' class="final"'; } ?> ><?php if($potential&&$open) { echo ' '; } elseif($potential) { echo ' '; }?><?php echo $subCat->getName(); ?></a>
<?php if ($open && $potential): ?>
<ul>
<?php foreach ($subcategory->getChildrenCategories() as $subsubcategory): ?>
<?php $subsubCat = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load($subsubcategory); ?>
<?php $open = $this->isCategoryActive($subsubCat) ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $this->getCategoryUrl($subsubCat); ?>" <?php if($open) { echo ' class="final"'; } ?>><?php echo $subsubCat->getName(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>
</li>
<?php } ?>
<?php endforeach ?>
</ul>
</div>

Edit your CSS

ul#side-nav li.subcat {background-color:#f5f4f0;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;
color:#222;margin: 0 -5px;display: block;}
ul#side-nav li.subcat a {display: block;padding: 2px 10px;font-size: .85em;}
ul#side-nav li.subcat:hover {
background-color:#fefefe;background-position: 50% top;}
ul#side-nav li.subcat ul li {padding-left:18px;
line-height: 1.6;background:#fff }
ul#side-nav li.subcat ul li a {color: #1a443c;font-weight: bold;
font-size: .85em!important;
background: url(../images/base_images/icon-arrow-set.png) no-repeat 0 -59px;}
ul#side-nav li.subcat ul li:hover {text-decoration: underline;}
ul#side-nav li.subcat a ,
ul#side-nav li.subcat ul li a:hover {text-decoration: none;}

That’s it! Simple isn’t it?

Known issue in Magento version 1.3

The recent release of Magento v1.3 has introduced Flat Catalog Category and Flat Catalog Product features, and some codes had changed in code/core/Mage/Catalog/Naviation.php that resulting Peter’s code not compatible with v1.3, as such, you need to update:

<?php foreach ($_category->getChildren() as $subcategory): ?>

to <?php foreach ($_category->getChildrenCategories() as $subcategory): ?>

if you wish to switch on Flat Catalog Category; however, we found a bug related to custom options when add to cart is performed with Flat Catalog Category switched on. The bug has been assigned, and before Varien releases an update, your choice is to use the old code with “getChildren” with no Flat Catalog Category enables if you have Configurable products or Simple Products with Custom Options setup.

The above leftnav code is for Flat Catalog Category switch on. Simply revert “getChildrenCategories()” to “getChildren()” if you do not want to use Flat Catalog Category feature.

Closing note

The code calls “getStoreCategories” and “getChildrenCategories” and it works a bit similar to the Layered Navigation’s category. Nice it is but has a tiny issue that we didn’t aware, that is, on our Magento New Red Theme, on the homepage, you see Bestsellers and New Products are listed, if you click on any of the products there, in the product page, you do not see the vertical category menu. This is because we didn’t setup categories for “bestsellers” and “new products”, so as far as that product page concerned, it belongs to no category (in another word, none of the categories are ‘active’ – see the code: <?php if ($_category->getIsActive()) { ?> ) therefor vertical menu is not presented.

In conclusion, we think this vertical category menu works best in conjunction with horizontal “topMenu” and should not be a substitute of topMenu.

Related posts:

1. Custom Category Images Listing Block Tutorial
2. Tips For Creating Dynamic Category Landing Pages
3. Custom category menu navigation in Magento

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PHP Extension “curl” must be loaded
PHP Extension “mcrypt” must be loaded
PHP Extension “pdo_mysql” must be loaded

I googled and the answer was to load the extension in php.ini file. In xampp, there are two places where php.ini file is found. It is present inside php folder and inside apache/bin folder. You can load extensions mentioned in the above error by changing the php.ini file. Search for curl, mcrypt and pdo_mysql then just uncomment i.e. remove the semi-colon (;) present before the line of the extension. After that, you have to restart (stop and start) apache from your xampp control panel.

Change:

;extension=php_curl.dll to extension=php_curl.dll
;extension=php_mcrypt.dll to extension=php_mcrypt.dll
;extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll to extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll

It’s as simple as that but that didn’t work for me. Why? Because I also had apache and php installed separately in my computer. I had installed PHP and Apache server separately before installing the Xampp. So, xampp had used the php.ini configuration file of the Apache server installed before. And that php.ini file was inside programs file/apache group/apache/bin/php.ini. In this situation, changing php.ini file inside xampp folder will not solve my problem. I found my mistake by looking at phpinfo() of xampp.

Anyways, editing the right php.ini file will solve the above error. If anyone has faced the problem like mine then please see “Configuration File (php.ini) Path” in phpinfo(). There you will find the path of php.ini file. You have to edit that file.

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