CMS Made Simple Forums

I've got just a simple one level menu in my site (which is my first CMS MS site). I had set it all up in Dreamweaver before with all the styles etc. Now that I've imported the site into CMS MS I'm trying to make it work using Menu manager and I'm not understanding a lot! I know there's a special menu template (cssmenu.tpl) that I'm supposed to use. But it refers to styles I'm not using and I'm pretty sure I'd have a hard time changing them over.

So - what should I do? I have taken all my navigation styles out of the main stylesheet and put them into a second site-nav stylesheet which is attached to the main site template. But when I look at the site it looks terrible - the styles aren't reflected, obviously!

Should I just set up my own template with the nav code I had in the original Dreamweaver page? Or, what ... ?!

If I understood you right... try on assigning the nav style sheet in the admin... then your link css should take over...

cheers
jeremyBass

Um ... what do you mean? Where? I've attached the main stylesheet and the nav stylesheet to my main page template. I'm using the same template for all my pages.

Sorry - you've kind of lost me here ...

I'm sorry I meant un assign... but to be honest it's hard to tell what your issue really is.. got a link?.. try to look in firebug... that should tell you where the issue is... hope that help

cheers
jeremyBass

Sorry - I'm using MAMP - working off my own computer. Thought I'd leave the job of uploading this to when I sorted out all my other problems

My problem is how to make the menu appear using the styles I had set up. The wiki documentation isn't that clear - perhaps it is if you know the answer, but I certainly can't follow how to use menu manager and make the menu I had set up previously work, using those styles. It definitely worked out of CMS MS.

I added this to my document template as they said - {menu template='cssmenu.tpl'}
Of course I changed the div ids to the div I had actually set up.

I took the menu styles out of my main stylesheet and put them into a separate menu stylesheet (as the doucmentation said) and attached it to my document template.

But as soon as I did that, it didn't work. I don't understand if I'm supposed to make changes to cssmenu.tpl. It's got style names that I'm not using, and really I don't know php so it would be dangerous for me to change it I think!

This is just a simple one-level menu. If I didn't have to use the menu manager that'd be great, but of course then there'd be the problem of how to link to the other content! And I do need to learn how to use this ...

All you need do is attach one of the the CSSmenu stylesheets that come with CMSMS (Navigation: CSSMenu - Horizontal or Navigation: CSSMenu - Vertical) and change the values for the CMSMS menu ids and class styles to match the styling of your old menu.

Nullig

Hi Nullig

OK, I did that. But it still hasn't really picked up the image bg that is supposed to appear on hover and active pages. And in fact it hasn't picked up much of the styling at all. I actually changed the names of my styles to be the same as in that stylesheet - not sure if that's what you meant but it seemed sensible!

What is 'menuparent'? Is it significant in a one-level menu I wonder? I deleted references to that from the stylesheet as I thought that related to multi-level navigation..

And I assume I should still have "{menu template='simple_navigation'}" in the page template?

I'm sure I"ll get there in the end, with help! I've been impressed with my progress (CMS-MS) thus far, but have hit a bit of a roadblock here!

It's kind of hard to tell you exactly what to do w/o seeing any of your code, if your DW menu used some specific code/ID/class for the li or the a and the source of your cmsms page doesn't have it in any form, no ID/class, you may need to make a custom menu template...

I think I know what the problem is as I am also trying to figure this out.  CMS MS is a very nice product, however the documentation is a little circular in this area and doesn't point to how to solve the problem.  All the menu documentation says to use the existing templates, how to use them, and thats it.  It ambiguously claims to upload a template with ftp or file manager, but not where, how, or that it needs to be a smarty template.  Nor does it specify how to call databased menu templates as opposed to the file based ones, of if there even is a difference. 

To make matters worse, the menu manager offers a database menu area but the documentation of this function is limited to a couple of lines, one says that it is documented under Default Extensions/Modules -> menu manager, going there says the menu manager is documented back under How CMS MS Works -> menu manager, which in turn says the database templates are documented under Default Extensions/Modules -> menu manager.  This doesn't solve peoples problems it frustrates them. Another tutorial I found on the web said to copy or backup the existing templates and customize them, but it doesn't say that you should probably know the Smarty Template Engine, and really only briefly covers making light changes to the existing menu templates.  Perhaps a good solid tutorial on writing a CMS menu from scratch would be helpful?

To partly solve the problem, I believe you can import your menu as a smarty template using the database manager, but this assumes knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Smarty.  Nothing against the provided menu's, but they don't fit every possible case.  It would be nice to have something similar to the global blocks with html and css, however that would detract from the dynamics that CMS MS and Smarty offer.  The menu manager is a big jump for most people to consider, a menu is no longer just HTML a/hrefs, but is dynamically being created by pages. 

Wish I could solve Mark's problem but I too am just starting out with CMS/MS and I don't have an answer yet.  Making a menu in HTML/CSS with Dreamweaver or other tools is one thing, building it in Smarty is entirely different.  I can tell you Mark, that part of your problem is that the menu's aren't HTML or CSS which Dreamweaver created for you. 

If this will help, I did this and it works, this is for Mark and anyone else that wants a menu that isn't one of the default ones.  This is VERY basic and limited, but should convey enough knowledge.

/* Menu Manager Tutorial - Creating a Custom Menu */
In the Menu Manager, create a new menu under Database Templates.  This will open an editor where you can begin entering your menu - both HTML and CSS go in this file, it is a Smarty Template.  The context is fairly simple, in the beginning, you need a section defining your style.
Follow this up with a for loop to step through the menu options, you can copy this from the existing menu templates, it can help.
This is a VERY BASIC menu - the code if I understand it tests $count, then builds a menu using UL/LI tags, the foreach loops through $nodelist - I suspect that is the various pages, a new variable, $node is created - it has many variables or settings.  The simple ones like $node->url and $node->menutext pull the URL and Menu text from the system.  So when you create a new page, you see menu text and it links to the URL.  There are a lot of options, and looking at the existing templates you can learn them.  For my needs (learning CMS/MS) I wasn't interested in all the accessibility options.

Hope that helps, sorry if I ruffled any feathers, but the menu manager has been frustrating me for 2 days.  At least I've been using Smarty for a while.

One correction - I put my menu styling in my main style sheet.  I know previous I said to put {* CSS content *} but that doesnt' seem to actually use it, I believe its for reference only.  So I put my chosen menu styling in my css file under stylesheet manager like any other content.  Sorry!  Tried it the other way and did NOT get what I expected - threw things in all sorts of directions!  HA HA...

Thank you so much for that! I have been tied up for the past couple of days (not literally!) with a new day job which involves a lot of travelling. So I haven't had a chance to do any more, or even read here till now.

I will try what you suggested to create a  new menu template - it may be one evening this week, or perhaps not till the weekend. But I will let you know how I go!

Thanks again ...

j88per

You keep referring to Mark like "this is for Mark" if you are talking about me uh thanks anyways as I have in my main install over 50 diff. custom made menu template and do things like this...
http://www.medtechglobal.com/ which of course is best viewed not in ie6 as it uses transparent png but you get the idea...
or this one...
http://mastoremata.reth.gr/cms/ where the menu that is on the left is made up of ul and section headers then if you click one of those you see another left side menu with alternating colors...

I was asking what the CSS IDs classes etc. that the DW menu uses...

Ha - yes Mark and j88per - I do think names were getting confused there! It was  me having the problem ...

Anyway, I just wanted to say I did have a go last night and it works! I think my problem was I was looking at the cssmenu.tpl and seeing all that php/smarty code there and really not understanding it at all.

When I looked at the basic code that j88per put up, and also the simple_nav.tpl (or whatever it's called) I could suddenly see what was going on, and make it work the way I wanted it to work. Well, there are still a few problems but they're with my CSS, not the menu template!

Sorry about this - it's a very steep learning curve for me ... But you have to start somewhere!

thanks everyone for your support ... I'm afraid I'm bound to be back with more questions before this site is done!

Yes - Mark I apologize, I glanced to see the author and saw your name and just assumed you had written the original problem.  Regardless the problem is solved and maybe next time I'll read the author a little closer...