Magento has now given us the option to upload a thumbnail as well as a main category image, meaning you can cater for both instances of needing a category image. The most common need for a thumbnail must come when displaying subcategories on the category landing page.

The code for the thumbnail URL is:

Mage::getBaseUrl('media').'catalog/category/'.$_category->getThumbnail()

Notice the use of Baseurl(‘media’)? This will ensure that media directory is always found. Then the file path always begins in the category directory.

For those of you keeping score, here’s the main category image script:

$this->htmlEscape($_category->getImageUrl());

Pretty soon you’ll find yourself able to create subcategory pages of thumbnails and main images with ease.