How to display files inside subcategories under top level category

[dubikan]

I found myself maintaining a poorly built website in a CMS I'm not really familiar with (Joomla, version 3.2), so I'm sort of fumbling through making basic improvements to it until we can secure a new designer. So, apologies for my lack of knowledge on this.

The website uses jDownloads to display lists of PDFs. They are currently divided into three subcategories under one main category. I have two questions:

1) Right now, the only way to view them is to go into the individual subcategories, but I would like to be able to show all of them within a single page while still keeping the option of showing just one subcategory at a time. Is there a view to show all files in all subcategories at the same time? A workaround I can think of is to scrap the subcategories and use tags instead, but the tags display is really ugly right now (plus, it will require additional clicks since it doesn't have the download button), and that would be a whole new rabbit hole to go into.

2) Is there a way to search through the documents in a specific category? There are lots of other documents in other categories, so the general search on jDownloads is pretty useless to users. Is there a way to allow them to search through a specific category? Ideally, this will be a link that defaults to a search within a category, rather than the user having to manually select what category to search through (although I don't think they can even do that right now).

Thank you for your help and patience!

[ColinM]

Hi
I will try to help.

Is there a view to show all files in all subcategories at the same time?

The short answer is yes.  It requires another jDownloads menu item in the menu - it is the menu item 'List all Downloads'.  In the List Layouts tab of the Menu item there are options as to the Order eg Alphabetical, Most Recent First, etc in which to list the Downloads; and how many to show on a page.
If you need detail help let me know.
ColinM