Another newbie question.  How would one build a menu tree dynamically?  So far, I see all the menu links are embedded in the templates.  I want something like root menu with submenus underneath.  And a user may later on add a page and can add it to any specific location of the menu tree.  Something on the line like Drupal.  Thanks in advance.

There are a variety of approaches to this. EE doesn’t have a “menu builder” tool in the way that you’re thinking of. EE makes as little assumptions as possible as to how a user wants to use HTML. Generally speaking its better to build the menu however you want and then pull content into it.

Some people use EE’s categories as page tools, others the Pages Modules, and still others stick with the simple and straight-forward HTML inside an embedded template site wide. There are various ways to let the user add to the menu tools with each method, it just depends on your needs.

You might also take a look at Cocaholic’s Navigator Module which is like a more traditional menu builder for EE.

Of course you can use entry titles as navigation too…

It would be best to let us know your desired structure and perhaps we can help out.

Have you looked at the other threads about navigation and structure?

Thanks.  The site will have a menu navigation very similar to EE home site.  My site will have 5 root-level menu items.  Each main menu item may be populated with a number of submenu items shown as drop-down.  The end-user will need to have the ability to create a new static page and the new page will be shown up as one of the specific submenu item.  Pretty standard CMS stuff.  Sorry but I don’t see it in the tutorials or documents about this stuff.

Greetings, Arnold.  This is absolutely possible, but as mentioned above, there are many, many ways to handle this.  I would begin by creating a simple template with just your navigation items in it.  This way, you can embed that in other templates, making it easy to update down the road.

For allowing teh end-user to add a sub-navigation item, I would personally create a weblog for those navigation items, with each entry being a navigation item.  For instance, I have a weblog for Site Information.  In that I have these entries:

* About me
* About the site
* Privacy Policy

I can output on my page the full information for one.  But, I can also create a drop-down using this code:

What this would do is link to those entries, and if your client added a new entry in this info weblog, it would automatically be added to your navigation.  You can use the Pages Module as well if you want to have a special URI for these pages.

So, as you can see, this is entirely possible.  If you do want more specific help with implementing this, I’d recommend downloading and trying EE and starting to build out your site, then posting in the How To forum where the community can assist you in building the navigation you want for your site. =)

FWIW - I’ve posted a number of examples and tutorials around building navigation with EE.

Thanks Lisa.  Using this approach, does it imply I should map one web blog to each root menu item.  I suppose I’ll need a custom field ‘Weight’ so the submenus can be displayed in order of user preference.  Since the back-end design is gearing toward publishing, it may not be very intuitive for user to change the order of the submenus like a traditional menu builder tool....

Hi, Arnold - It is really impossible to say what you *should* do.  You may want to use categories for navigation, or the other methods mentioned above.  The root menus can be driven by different methodologies - there is no restriction, and no best practice.  It is what is best for your site.

At a deeper level, what needs to happen is sitting down and figuring out what your data is and how to best structure it within ExpressionEngine.  That may be driven by how you want navigation, or it may drive how your navigation appears.  I know you want clear answers, “what is the best way to do this” - but that is something you need to decide. =)

To add to that - for ordering of entries, check out the Reeorder module from http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Modules =)

Thanks everyone.  I’ll check out the codes.  I think this is one area EE can really improve upon on.  I can foresee this can be a stumbling block for many EE newbies like myself.  It is nice to know that it can be done in so many ways, but at least it should provide one or two methods one can use right away, such as including Navigator module as part of the core modules.  Btw, Navigator doesn’t work for me since it doesn’t handle sub-category.  Otherwise, it is good for what it is.

Michael Boyink - 12 March 2008 05:27 PM

FWIW - I’ve posted a number of examples and tutorials around building navigation with EE.

Your site is extremely helpful.  A great asset to EE community.  Particularly I like the ‘Building an EE site” series, very practical info.  Keep up the good work!