Magento – How to show a Category Image on the Product Page

There is no (easy) way to do this dynamically from the CMS page content editor. I'm afraid this will require some custom code.

Best course of action would be to create a new extensions, let's call it Acme_Categorygrid for this example. For more info about creating extensions please view this comment by chapagain

In your etc/config.xml file add the following code

<config>
    [...]
    <global>
            [...]
        <blocks>
            <categorygrid>
                <class>Acme_Categorygrid_Block</class>
            </categorygrid>
        </blocks>
            [...]
    </global>
    [...]
</config>

Then create a new Block class with the following code

class Acme_Categorygrid_Block_Grid extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
{

    public function categories()
    {
        $parent_id = 1;

        $children = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCategories($parent_id);

        return $children;
    }
}

Now all we need is a template file

<?php

$categories = $this->categories();

?>
<ul class="category-grid">
<?php foreach ($categories as $category): ?>
    <li>
        <a href="<?php echo $category->getUrl();?>">
            <img src="<?php echo $category->getThumbnail();?>" alt="<?php echo $category->getName();?>"/>
        </a>
    </li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

Now you can add in the content of the CMS page a block tag: {{block type='categorygrid/grid' template='categorygrid/grid.phtml'}}

This should now display the just created block. Mind you, I haven't tested the code so it might need some tweaking, especially in the template file but hopefully this'll help you a long way.

I would advise never editing core code as it will create issues for you down the road.

This is a database change. 0 comes before 1 and no default value is set for that attribute so 0 will always be selected unless otherwise told.

You need to go into your database, find the "is_active" attribute code (there may be two, only edit the one with the Source Model of "eav/entity_attribute_source_boolean"). In "default_value" add the value of "1".

If you know how to use Queries on phpMyAdmin, that would look like:

UPDATE `eav_attribute` SET `default_value` = '1' WHERE `eav_attribute`.`attribute_code`='is_active' AND `eav_attribute`.`source_model`='eav/entity_attribute_source_boolean';

Make sure to save you changes then try to create a new category. You should see something like this:

Note: Whenever editing a field in the database, you should always make a backup. Also, I did not to extensive testing on this, so you should test this change in a development instance first.