How to show subcategories even if parent category is disabled?

Question

How can I show the subcategories in the frontend even if the parent category is disabled?

Suppose I have categories like following

Electronics
           Cell phones
                      Accessories
                      Digital Camera
           Cameras

I Cellphone category is disabled, is it possible to still show the sub categories Accessories and Digital Camera, under Electronics category?

Answer 1

In short? No. But you could override the Mage_Catalog_Block_Navigation class, method _renderCategoryMenuItemHtml to not check for isActive.

You would have to commit out line 241-243 and probably remove the link to the category to prevent people from clicking on an inactive and non existing category. So on line 308 it should be something like this

if (category->isActive()):
   $html[] = '<a href="'.$this->getCategoryUrl($category).'"'.$linkClass.'>';
   $html[] = '<span>' . $this->escapeHtml($category->getName()) . '</span>';
   $html[] = '</a>';
else:
   $html[] = '<span>' . $this->escapeHtml($category->getName()) . '</span>';
endif;