PS 3 & Side Menu category sort order

Hello, I would like to sort the order of the categories in the side menu so that they are in the same order as the Product drop down list in the main navigation menu.

Currently, the menus are in this order:

Main Menu (as product category order - I've left out Search & Show All Products for clarity)
New Arrivals
Future Releases
Adventure
Children
Crime & Thriller
Historical Fiction
Literature
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Reading Copies

Side menu (alphabetically)
Adventure
Children
Crime & Thriller
Future Releases
Historical Fiction
Literature
New Arrivals
Reading Copies
Sci-Fi & Fantasy

(I have looked at other posts that seem related to this subject and these all seem to refer to the intermerdiate.php file in the CSSMenuWriter folder. Unfortunately, in every thread example I’ve seen the code it’s necessary to change to alter the sort order doesn’t exist in my file (or my unaltered check file)! And believe me, I’ve looked and searched. Please note that I don’t have any products loaded into my local testing site yet, just in case this affects the code in the intermediate.php file.)

One other small point is that you may have realised I’m a bookseller from the categories I use. Children, of course, should read Children’s (a small but important point for someone dealing with literature) but it can’t because of the problems caused by using an apostrophe in a category name. Any sign of a fix yet for this known problem?

I really will appreciate any help with this sort problem and thanks in advance.

To make the categories in the left area appear in the same order as the categories from the products dropdown list in PowerStore 3 you just need to update the main template.

Go into Templates > Main.dwt.php. In this file on line 269 you should have this code:

$query_SubCategoryList = "SELECT * FROM ps3_categories WHERE CategoryParent = ".$StartWith . " ORDER BY CategoryName";

Update this line of code so that it is ordered by the CategoryID like this:

$query_SubCategoryList = "SELECT * FROM ps3_categories WHERE CategoryParent = ".$StartWith . " ORDER BY CategoryID";

As for using single quotes and apostrophes in the names you can do this by using the entity version of this character like this:

use this for double quote:

"

use this for single quote

‘

Thanks Eric, your solutions solved these two problems for me. Many thanks.

You are very welcome, I'm glad to hear that.