How to add Categories Menu?

Regular Joined: Jun 19, 2007 Posts: 66

I have seen some sites with a Categories Menu. How do I add that? as my site's gonna be a computer shop site ... Plz help

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 5:42 pm

I'm not sure how the categories menu works or whether it refers to the same thing I am thinking of. I've just been staring at the news module all day so ... news items can have categories. The default category is "article". If you choose this you won't see any category displayed next to the title of the article in news. But, if you go into admin and click on any news item you will get a chance to add categories. You can do so there. This has limited functionality but the main one is that if you click on the category next to the article when it is displayed on the news page you will get a list of all articles that fall under that category. The articles category is always displayed on the home page. For other categories you need to select whether to display it on the home page. But I realize that your question about categories may have been in an entirely different category and if so I apologize in advance.

Subject Matter Expert Joined: Feb 23, 2004 Posts: 358

If it's a computer shop site, are you selling online? Sounds like you need a commerce/cart module...

PHrEEk

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:11 am

Are you thinking of the Sommaire menu block, like what is used here?

http://www.montegoscripts.com/

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:42 am

nope ... no shop cart needed ... just the categories menu ....

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:28 am

Have you seen this elsewhere? Can you post a link, or image so we can understand what you are describing?

Thanks
Jakec

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:24 am

This has been seen here :
http://www.scc-tds.com/index.php

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:04 am

Okay, so these are news categories like I alluded to in my previous post. As such they are stored in the stories_cat table. There is a catid field and a title field. Almost certainly that category menu is pulling them from that table and displaying them. You can see how the link to find all articles in a category is formed in news/index.php.

Do you have have access to the code that underlies that categories menu? Or can you write to the site and see if they will give it to you? Humm ... it must be a block. It would not be that difficult to do ... like most things it's just a matter of time.

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:11 am

Nahh can't contact them ... they never reply back ... anyway if it's a block what would it be called?

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:01 am

It is a block, and it appears to be static, ie., it's not a 'top' list of any sort or anything else that would require a SQL fetch to populate. Therefore it's most likely just standard markup in a block file. All you need to do is look at sample_block.php to start a block template, then add your categories and however you want them presented. You should be able to accomplish this with extremely simple HTML.

PHrEEk

registered · Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:44 am

Have you tried the standard Categories block (block-Categories.php)?

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:05 pm

LOL, you are too good Gremmie. I never even thought of looking in there. Avoid what's obvious at all costs Smile

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 6:45 am

how? I'm no coder or anything I barely know frontpage Razz

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:05 am

The Catergories Menu block should show in your Blocks Administration, you just need to activate it. Very Happy

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:34 am

oki but how to add content to it? .. I tried going to content and adding categories ... nothing plz help Razz

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:19 am

Apparently the block only shows a category if you have content in that category.

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:37 am

like how do I add content to that categories plzz save us both time and tell me step by step once and for all

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:46 am

When you "Add a new page" in the Content admin panel, there is a drop down box to assign it to a category.

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:56 am

I did but still didn't show anything .. can u try and tell me ?

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 11:08 am

The Categories Menu block is for News Article categories, rather than content. So you need to setup your categories under News in the admin menu.

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 11:27 am

still nothing showing up ......

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 11:40 am

Have you added any news to that category?

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:09 pm

jakec is correct. That Categories block is for news stories that have been categorized, not content. Sorry about that.