Magento – Show Specific Categories On Magento Home Page

I found the answer on another wiki- http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/4_-_themes_and_template_customization/navigation/how_to_create_a_vertical_left_hand_menu

I just change my .phtml file to one called home_nav.phtml and added this code.

<div class="vertical-nav-container box base-mini">
<div class="vertical-nav">

<!--<div class="head">-->

<!--<h4>-->
<div class="block block-cart">
    <div class="block-title">
        <strong><span><?php echo $this->__('Categories') ?></span></strong>
</div><!--End block block-cart-->


<div class="block-content">

<!--</h4>-->
<!--</div>--><!--End Of head-->

<h4 class="no-display">
<?php echo $this->__('Category Navigation:') ?></h4>
<ul id="nav_vert">
<?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
<?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?>
<?php endforeach ?> </ul>
</div>
</div><!--End Of vertical-nav-->

<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('topLeftLinks') ?>

</div></div><!--End Of vertical-nav-container box base-mini-->

Then displayed the code in a block using

{{block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.category" template="catalog/navigation/vert_nav.phtml"}} 

a more detailed answer can be found on the wiki link at the top

Hopefully this can help soemone as i struggled with this for some time.

You need to create your own block, or at least one template.
Here is the short version using only a template.
Create the file app/design/frontend/base/default/template/homepage/categories.phtml with this content:

<?php
$rootId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getRootCategoryId();
$categories = Mage::getModel('catalog/category')->getCollection()
    ->addAttributeToSelect('*')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('parent_id', $rootId)
    ->setOrder('position')
    ->addAttributeToFilter('include_in_menu', 1) //this is needed if you want only the categories in the menu
    ->addAttributeToFilter('is_active', 1);

$_helper = $this->helper('catalog/output'); 
?>
<?php if ($categories->count() > 0) : ?>
<ul>
    <?php foreach ($categories as $category) : ?>
       <li>
           <div class="name">
              <a href="<?php echo $category->getUrl()?>" title="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($category->getName())?>"><?php echo $category->getName()?></a>
           </div>
           <div class="image">
               <?php if ($category->getImageUrl()) :?>
                   <img src="<?php echo $category->getImageUrl()?>" alt="<?php echo $this->escapeHtml($category->getName())?>" />
               <?php endif;?>
           </div>
           <div class="description">
               <?php echo $_helper->categoryAttribute($category, $category->getDescription(), 'description') ?>
           </div>
       </li>
    <?php endforeach;?>
</ul>
<?php endif;?>

Now you need to add this to the homepage content:

{{block type="core/template" template="homepage/categories.phtml"}}

The markup of the template may need some modifications in order to make it a slider, but all the elements you need are there.

There is a cleaner method where you create you own block and move the code that retrieves the categories to a block method and call that method in the template. But the idea is the same.

I haven't tested the code so be careful at syntax errors.