Magento: Categories Don’t Show Up

Many people are having problems setting up their store’s categories with Magento. That aspect of Magento is quite simple though and the documentation is pretty clear on that particular subject.

When you setup categories in Magento and they don’t show up on your site’s front end, most likely your categories aren’t setup properly in the admin.

Here is what you should look for:

1. Make sure that your store is set with the appropriate root category.

This is done in the following way: go to System > Manage Stores and click on your store (not website and not store view – you must click on the store which will show up in the middle column). Then under “Root Category” there is a drop down with all the root categories you have set up – select the correct one.

2. The way Magento works is that all your stores categories must be sub categories under your store’s root category.

So all your top level categories must be created as sub categories of your root category. Then you can also create sub sub categories and more. Does that make sense?

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment below and I will answer them!

3. As always, make sure to delete Magento cache and reindex all data!

Most issues will be resolved once you reindex Magento data and refresh all Magento cache. To reindex Magento data follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Index Management
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “Action” select “Reindex Data” and click submit

To refresh Magento cache, follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Configuration and
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “action” click on “refresh” and click submit
4. Then click on these buttons:
   1. Flush Magento Cache
   2. Flush Cache Storage
   3. Fluch Catalog Images Cache
   4. Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache

4. Lastly I highly recommend manually deleting all files under var/cache and var/sessions.

And remember to delete your browser’s cache and cookies to make sure you are viewing the up to date version of your Magento site!