Thread

Hi Everyone,

So I’ve been working on a fairly complex site, several actually, all handled by MSM and using Structure for each one respectively.

Here’s my situation:

The content/pages that are available on my main site, also need to be available on my sub-domains, this also applies to my navigation layout. Unfortunately, Structure doesn’t allow me to pull my navigation from my main site into the others using its native tags.

So now that I’ve already got each individual site navigation and content set up, what would be the best way to “pull” my navigation and content from my main site, without hard-coding it into the sub-domains?

I’d really appreciate any help on this and thanks in advance.

- Gordon

Hi Gordon,

Welcome to the forums! I’m actually not terribly familiar with Structure myself. Regarding the navigation, is that a feature of Structure?

As I understand it, Structure still makes use of channel to store content, so you should be able to use Channel Entries tags along with the site parameter to pull entries from other sites. Is that what you’re trying? Could you give me some examples of what you’re doing? That should help me get some context for this problem you’re having.

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the reply and the welcome.

Regarding your questions about Structure, indeed, the navigation is a feature of Structure. However, because of the way structure works, I’ve got one channel with several entries but they get displayed as “pages” in a hierarchy.

Here’s a breakdown, as best as I can, of what I’m up to:

There’s a main site (Site A) with one channel that Structure uses to store pages AND sub-pages (granted this isn’t ideal but I was tricked by Structure’s ease-of-use appeal). Structure allows me to sift these entries into a hierarchy which simulates the page/sub-page situation. The entries aren’t linked in any way other than through Structure, the settings of which, aren’t accessible via any standard Structure tags.

Structure includes a tag that compiles entries in its hierarchy into a useable navigation which it generates automatically. This tag does NOT support the use of the site parameter. This is where my problem exists because each of my sub-domains (Sites A, B, C and D) need to have the same navigation/pages/sub-pages as Site A in addition to their own content and pages, which are handled by unique instances of Structure.

I’m unable to use regular channel entries tags to duplicate the navigation in my other sites due to the fact that there’s no (simple) way to duplicate the page/sub-page hierarchy. All entries are in the same channel and there’s no way to know which are “parent” entries and which are “children” entries.

Anyway, what my team and I have decided to do is use custom mySQL quieres in the query tag to pull the Structure parent value directly from the database and pull all entries with that Structure parent into a navigation. I think this should work and if anyone reads this and has had a simliar experience feel free to let me know if I’m going down a path doomed to failure or destined for success.

Thanks again and I hope my explanation was easy to understand, it’s a bit of a messy situation.

- Gordon

Structure includes a tag that compiles entries in its hierarchy into a useable navigation which it generates automatically. This tag does NOT support the use of the site parameter.

I see. That is something you’ll want to work on with the guys who make Structure. From what you’re telling me, it sounds like Structure isn’t MSM-compatible. It might be something they’d consider adding to Structure.

Hi Kevin,

I actually posted onto Structure’s support forums about this issue and it was suggested trying to alter the add-on and using custom queries. I think other users have requested this feature so hopefully we’ll see it in future iterations. For the time being though I’ll find a way around. Haven’t implemented the solution I posted before, but when I do I can always post it here in case anyone else runs into the same situation.

Thanks again for the help.

- Gordon

Sure thing, Gordon! I’ll leave this support thread open for a bit so you can post back here with your solution once you’re able to try it.