Category sidebar on homepage

Hi, I am returning to litecart after a break because I couldn't get it to do what I wanted. Sadly, I am having to relearn what I previously did. For some reason, when I first tried, the basket didn't work. I am starting again with a new installation and whilst the basket page now works, I want to add a category panel to the home page so the categories are listed on the left.

I have done this before but despite scouring the forum, I can't find/remember how this is done. I attach a screen shot of the former site and the new one.

Hope someone can help.
Thanks,
Nick

Copy the structure of a page having the sidebar like category.inc.php.
https://github.com/litecart/litecart/blob/2.5.2/public_html/includes/templates/default.catalog/pages/category.inc.php

Put it in index.inc.php.
https://github.com/litecart/litecart/blob/2.5.2/public_html/includes/templates/default.catalog/pages/index.inc.php

Thank you.
I tried that and it worked although I got a lot of errors because the code I copied is relevant to a different project. I see the principle.
I wonder though if what I have done previously is set the home page to be the categories page. Is that possible. If so, can you tell me how?
I suspect that is what i must have done before because I don't remember diving into the PHP code, at least not succesfully!
Best wishes,
Nick

[quote]is set the home page to be the categories page. Is that possible.[/quote]
Copy the contents of /includes/templates/default.catalog/pages/categories.inc.php to /includes/templates/default.catalog/pages/index.inc.php.