No I did not actually, I didn't even think of that. I was just looking for a quick solution and this is the only one I could think of
There's another solution: fancy categories
The reason I didn't use fancy categories is because I have my subcategories displaying the whole time someone is browsing in their parent category. From what I saw with the x-cart default setup, the subcategories disappear when you click on one of them, I didn't like that so I had some mods done to keep the subcategories visible until the customer switches main categories.
-Mike