Flash and Joomla News by Eyezberg

Joomla! Menus... collections of links to various parts of your site, or even to other sites.

The most important menu is the mainmenu. This comes with a default install and can not be deleted. Each menu you find in the Menu Manager has an associated module in the Module Manager. Each new menu you create also creates a new module. Each menu you delete also deletes the module. So first thing to remember is the tight link between a menu and its module.

Consequence: when you configure and manage your menu (links), you will have to adjust settings in (at least) two different places: the menu item, and the module for this menu. Ex.: you create a new item with a menu image. If you don't set the Show Menu Images parameter to yes in the module settings, the image won't be visible!

Other random facts it is good to know about menues:

• when deleting a menu link, it is not completely deleted, but moved to Trash in case you need to restore it later in. If you really do not need it anymore, it might be a good idea to remove it from Trash completely, as it can sometimes still show up in the most unexpected places or circumstances...
• you can nest menu links into multiple sublevels using the "parent" selector. This is very usefull to fake a much deeper content structure than is currently possible with the section/category/item provided by Joomla. Link one section, link the next section and set the first as parent, add the categories with the second as parent.. Note that you will find a setting to expand sublevels in the module parameters.
• once a menu item is created, you can not modify what it links to by editing the item. If the link has to be changed, you will need to create a new link and delete the old one.
• always use non-SEF URLs when linking to other pages of your site, in case you ever need to disable your SEF extension, or change extension, or modify your configuration. Non-SEF URLs will keep working no matter which SEF you later decide to use.
• many settings become available once a menu item is created, so once the link is ready to be saved, use the Apply button first, and the page will refresh with the new parameters for you to configure. Always think to check the menu link for a hidden setting you're missing!
  
• the first published link in the mainmenu defines your homepage. Whatever link is moved to this position, the content it links to will be shown on a default access of your site (domain URL). This can be a content item, a component, ...
• as the display of menus is handled by modules, it is very easy to set entire menues to registered-only access, or have them show up only on selected pages (menu items).
• you can show or hide a title for each menu from the module parameters.
• the look of your menus is handled by the active templates CSS. The style sheet would provide the look for lists and links which make up most of the layout. Note that as you can add a custom style to modules (_sfx), you can change this on a per-menu basis.
• if you are not entirely happy with the default functionality provided by Joomlas menus, there are many, both free and commercial menu extensions you might want to try for more or different features. Some can be installed like any other extension, others will have to be inserted directly into the templates index.php code.

(This article written for Joomla 1.0.8)

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null said:

With regard to your recommendation "always use non-SEF URLs when linking to other pages of your site" .. the way the search engine actually walks your site is generally through the links on your pages. I.e., your menus. If you have SEF URL's, the only way they'll be used is if you also use them in your menus. Otherwise, don't even bother with them, because they're just not going to be used by the search engine if they're not in your menus (unless you happen to have a link or two elsewhere in the page.) Search engines don't just "magically" know about all the pages on your site. In general, they have to surf your site to find them, just the same that a human does: start at the top and work through the menus. If you don't use SEF URL's in your menus, they just won't get used. Great article otherwise, though!

December 28, 2007 | url

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