Joomla / Virtuemart - How to display level 2 subcategories on virtuemart homepage?

Question

Hi,

I have a Joomla shop that stocks parts for cars. I am using the Virtuemart component to handle the shop aspect.

The top parent categories for my products are; Air filters Oil filters Fuel filters Pollen filters

This means that the virtuemart side menu displays these 4 options, which is fine. However, for the shop (virtuemart) homepage I want to display all the level 2 subcategories; Audi BMW etc

I can't seem to find a ay to do this. Currently I'm stuck with just the 4 top parent categories being displayed on the homepage, when really I want the car manufacturers displayed there.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Answer 1

1) Simple answer: you can try this hack, which displays all subcategories:

in administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes/ps_product_category.php, look for the line

$allowed = false;
if( $depth_list[$n] > 0 ) 
{

change it to

$allowed = true;   //show all by default
if( $depth_list[$n] > 0 ) 
{

2) I think the real issue here is more your organizational/classification system... it's probably not optimal to be using categories/sub-categories to represent brands/makes as well as types-of-products.

I'd suggest you look more into Virtumart documentation and read up on "Product Types" as well as "Product Attributes" -- I think these would be more suited for what you're trying to do (as I believe you can filter cross-category product-search-results by product-types)

hope this helps, E