How to Create a Nested Category in Joomla Content Management

By Seamus Bellamy and Steven Holzner

With Joomla 1.6’s nested category method of site organization, there’s no limit to the number of categories that you can implement on a site. A nested category is just a fancy name for category within a category. For example, you could divide an Ice Cream category into a number of nested categories: Bars, Cartons, and Cones or a Sandwiches section into three nested categories: Subs, Wraps, and Triple Deckers.

To create a new nested category, follow these steps:

Click the Category Manager icon in the control panel, or choose Content→Category Manager in any back-end page.

Category Manager opens.
Click the New button.

The Add New Category page opens.
Enter a title for the category in the Title text box.

For this exercise, type Cartons.
From the Parent drop-down menu, choose the category you want this nested category to go into.

For this exercise, choose Ice Cream.
Choose a status from the State drop-down menu.

For this exercise, choose Published.
Choose an option from the Access drop-down menu to specify who can access the articles in the section.

For this exercise, choose Public.
In the Description window, enter a description of your new section.

For this exercise, type This is SuperDuperMegaCo’s Ice Cream Cartons category.
Click the Save & Close button.

The Add New Category page closes, and you return to Category Manager, where you see the new category.