Brands in sub categories in Magento

Question

I'm trying to solve a problem with the top navigation in Magento.

The top navigation I have, currently shows a top level category and it's sub categories. What I want to do is add another level underneath each sub category containing brands in that sub category as shown here (http://cl.ly/image/3A3D1i1D3j3x)

I want the brand items to be retrieved from the "brands" attribute of products in the parent sub category (Jackets etc.) rather than creating a bunch of brand sub categories in each product type sub category as that is a nightmare for administrating the system.

If anyone knows of a good extension free or paid that does this, I'm willing to go down that route too.

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

I'm working on something similar right now. It's not an exact fit as it wouldn't integrate with your menu but I would recommend using Amasty's Improved Layered Navigation for this.

It allows you to add a horizontal layered navigation block and set it up so that you can filter by brand based on an attribute. You could use the default manufacturer attribute but I've found it less problematic to add a new one called Brands. The module allows you to assign images to attribute values, so you can have all the logos for your brands listed and the user can filter the products by clicking on the logo.

You can also then use the same brand images in the product list page and the product view page.

This is very easy for your client to manage, they just assign the product it's brand attribute when they create it.

Here's a screenshot of the site I'm working on so far (still not finished so some rough edges) so you can see what I mean. Just a few test products in there and I have used the vertical block rather than the horizontal one but you get the idea. The user just clicks on a logo to filter the list.

And apart from that there's lots of other handy aspects to the module, including sliders for filtering other attributes (weight, price and anything numeric).