How To Display Sub
Categories on a
Category Page in
Magento 1 (with
images)

Author: Rowan Burgess

  • 13 Feb 2021
  • 20 minutes

It’s a pretty common requirement to show a list of sub categories inside a parent category page, instead of products. Who knows why this wasn’t a standard function of Magento, but thankfully there’s a simple workaround.

So let’s begin at the top.

1. In Magento admin navigate to CMS>Static Blocks

2. Click “Add New Block” at the top right

3. Create the new static block with the following details:

Block Title: Sub Category Listing

Identifier: Sub Category Listing

Status: Enabled

Content:

{{block type="catalog/navigation" template="catalog/navigation/subcategory_listing.phtml"}}

4. Click Save Block in the top right

Display mode: Static Block only

5. Navigate to the parent category under Catalog>Manage Categories and within the Display Settings Tab set to the following:

CMS Block:Sub Category Listing

Is Anchor:No

6. Click Save Category in the top right

7. Create a new file called subcategory_listing.phtml in:

app/design/frontend/yourpackagename/yourthemename/template/catalog/navigation/

Containing the following code:

getCurrentCategory();
$_categories = $_category->getCollection()->addAttributeToSelect(array('url_key','name','image','all_children','is_anchor','description'))
->addAttributeToFilter('is_active', 1)
->addIdFilter($_category->getChildren())
->setOrder('position', 'ASC')
->joinUrlRewrite();
?>
getIsActive()): ?>
debug(), null, 'mylogfile.log'); ?>
htmlEscape($_category->getName()) ?>

Let’s talk about how
I can help you