How to show few categories with image and description on home page?

Question

i want to show root categories with image and description on home page content area. Basically i want show them as slides, each category scrolling with its image and description.

Please suggest

Answer 1

You need to create your own block, or at least one template.
Here is the short version using only a template.
Create the file app/design/frontend/base/default/template/homepage/categories.phtml with this content:

<?php
$rootId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId();
$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('parent_id', $rootId)
    ->setOrder('position')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('include_in_menu', 1) //this is needed if you want only the categories in the menu
    ->addAttributeToFilter('is_active', 1);

$_helper = $this->helper('catalog/output'); 
?>
<?php if ($categories->count() > 0) : ?>
<ul>
    <?php foreach ($categories as $category) : ?>
       <li>
           <div class="name">
              <a href="<?php echo $category->getUrl()?>" title="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($category->getName())?>"><?php echo $category->getName()?></a>
           </div>
           <div class="image">
               <?php if ($category->getImageUrl()) :?>
                   <img src="<?php echo $category->getImageUrl()?>" alt="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($category->getName())?>" />
               <?php endif;?>
           </div>
           <div class="description">
               <?php echo $_helper->categoryAttribute($category, $category->getDescription(), 'description') ?>
           </div>
       </li>
    <?php endforeach;?>
</ul>
<?php endif;?>

Now you need to add this to the homepage content:

{{block type="core/template" template="homepage/categories.phtml"}}

The markup of the template may need some modifications in order to make it a slider, but all the elements you need are there.

There is a cleaner method where you create you own block and move the code that retrieves the categories to a block method and call that method in the template. But the idea is the same.

I haven't tested the code so be careful at syntax errors.

Answer 2

Form Below Code you can got All The Root Category of Current Store.

<?php $_helper = Mage::helper('catalog/category') ?>
<?php $_categories = $_helper->getStoreCategories() ?>
<?php $currentCategory = Mage::registry('current_category') ?>
<?php if (count($_categories) > 0): ?>
<ul id="nav">
    <?php foreach($_categories as $_category): ?>
        <li>
            <a href="<?php echo $_helper->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>">
                <?php echo $_category->getName(); ?>
            </a>                
        </li>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>
<?php endif; ?>

with the Use of this code you can integrate with your slider as you want.

Answer 3

Go to CMS > Pages and select your home page from the backend.

Add this line

{{block type="core/template" template="custom/home_categories.phtml"}}

Then create a file named "home_categories.phtml" inside "custom" folder under your theme directory and add the following lines.

$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->load(2)->getChildren(); foreach(explode(',',$categories) as $category):

[[YOUR CUSTOM SLIDES HTML]]

endforeach;