Categories in two columns

Hello everyone,

I was wondering whether anyone could help with what I think is a relatively straightforward problem (having said that, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to work!)

I’m trying to display my list of categories in two columns – but I need to display some additional content before each category is outputted (basically, it’s a list of countries, and I’m trying to output a country flag before each category name).

I have the code for both parts and both work perfectly when used independently … but I just can’t figure out how to merge the two together.

Here’s the code for the two columns:

<?php
$cats = explode("<br />",wp_list_categories('title_li=&echo=0&depth=1&style=none&child_of=7'));
$catsname =
$cat_n = count($cats) - 1;
for ($i=0;$i<$cat_n;$i++):
if ($i<$cat_n/2):
$cat_left = $cat_left.$cats[$i].'<br />';
elseif ($i>=$cat_n/2):
$cat_right = $cat_right.$cats[$i].'<br />';
endif;
endfor;
?>
<div class="left">
<?php echo $cat_left;?>
</div>
<div class="right">
<?php echo $cat_right;?>
</div>

And here’s the code I’m using to output the list of categories, with an image of the country flag for each:

<?php
  $categories = get_categories('child_of=7');
  foreach ($categories as $cat) {
  echo '<img src="url/to/image/goes/here/'.$cat->cat_name.'.png" alt="'.$cat->cat_name.'" />?<a href="'.get_category_link( $cat->cat_ID ).'">'.$cat->cat_name.'</a><br />';
  }
?>

If anyone can come up with a solution, I would be really, really grateful.

Thanks all,

Martin