Knowledgebase
How to manage the display and custom design settings of your Magento categories
When you create and edit product categories with Magento there are some options that are not required but can be used for changing the display and design of your category pages.
To manage the display settings of a category, in the admin panel of your Magento go to Catalog menu>Manage Categories, select the category from the list on the left and then click on the Display Settings tab that's above the category options on the right. By default, the category pages on the frontend display only the products. To change this use the drop-down menu for the option Display Mode; you can select to display only a static block or both a static block and the products. You can create static blocks from your Magento admin panel (CMS menu>Static Blocks). A static block can include text, images, links, etc. If you choose to display a static block, select the desired block from the CMS Block drop-down menu; that's the second option on the page with the display settings for the category.
The next setting on the Display Settings tab page is Is Anchor. Set it to Yes if you want the Layered Navigation block on the frontend to display additional filters such as product attributes. You can use the Available Product Listing Sort By option to manage the attributes that users are allowed to use on the frontend for sorting the products within the category. You can also change the default attribute from the Default Product Listing Sort By option. The Layered Navigation Price Step option allows you to change the price steps that will be shown in the Layered Navigation block for that category on the frontend.
The next tab with additional category settings is Custom Design. You can use it to change the theme and layout of the pages for that category. Just select the theme from the Custom Design drop-down menu and choose from the Apply To Products drop-down menu whether you want that design to apply to the pages of the products that are in that category. You can use the Active From and Active To options to specify a period in which the design changes will be applied; if you specify these dates, the switching between the designs will be automatic. You can use the Page Layout drop-down menu to make changes to the layout of the category. For example, you can include only one column (without the side bars) or you can use only one or all of the side bars.
For some more details and screenshots you can also check out the tutorial on how to configure the display and custom design settings of categories in Magento.