Magento

I\’ve been on countless blogs and tutorials and they all pretty much say the same thing.  Create the .phtml file (or use the default left.phtml), edit the catalog.xml file with something like this: 

Well the default catalog.xml file already has this code too.  So, basically, I\’m thinking it should just work without having to modify. 

I\’ve tried moving this code to the <default> area of the catalog.xml.  I\’ve tried replacing after=\"currency\" with before=\"-\" and deleting it.  And still no dice. 

There must be more to it, because it\’s not working for me.  Here is the site

Any help is really appreciated.

It could be possible left.phtml file is calling there but some code would be wrong in left.phtml file. Therefore, just echo on first line of left.phtml file and try to debug this on frontend side.

Type a word, e.g. Test, as the first line of code in left.phtml.

Does the text show up in the frontend?

If so, then there is something wrong with the rest of the code in left.phtml (it would surprize me, but not impossible)

If not, then the template file is not executed and there probably is something wrong in the xml structure. Maybe the block gets removed in one of the other xml files? Gotto check all of them to find that out.

Thanks guys!  That put me on the track to fixing it. 

I figured out that Magento was thinking I had 0 categories, so nothing showed up.  The left.phtml file is made to list all child categories of the current category you’re seeing.  So, if you’re at the last child category, nothing will show up there.  So I looked up the class it uses Mage_Catalog_Block_Navigation and replaced

with

Now it shows the top level categories all the time.  Now I have to figure out why the categories don’t show up in the product detail page.  Thanks again!

By default product details page use 2column-right layout.That’s why it is not displaying left navigation which is under left column.

Hello,

As the matter of fact the current menu system of Magento is not very convenient. It does not allow you to change the menu structure, add the own links or change the markup.
Consider the Menu Manager Pro. This extension simplifies the creation of menus of different types with different structure significantly.