2008-09 Joomla! Community Magazine

Joomla! Community Magazine - Learning

Joomla! 1.5 and the Million Dollar Wedding

Joomla!, quick, rapid, fast, speedy and custom

Step 5: Set up a few menu items

The “joomla_base” package has the following module positions:

1. level1_menu
2. level2_menu
3. content_top
4. content_bottom
5. sidebar_top
6. sidebar_bottom
7. footer
8. copyright

Position “level1_menu” is there to create a horizontal main menu., Let’s create that menu.

1. Create a couple of uncategorized articles in the article manager.
2. Go to Menus -> Mainmenu
3. Create a few new menu items, type Article and link them to the created articles.
4. Go to Extensions -> Module Manger and edit the Main menu module. Change the position parameter to “level1_menu” and set title to not display. On the right you’ll see more parameter options and you only have to change a few of them, Start level = 0, End level = 1 and under the advanced parameters set Menu Class Suffix = main and Module Class Suffix = main
5. Save the module, make sure it is published and have a look at the front-end of your site. If all went well you will now see a horizontal menu.

Position “level2_menu” is for submenu items and will be vertical, lets create that.

1. Create a couple of uncategorized articles again
2. Go to Menus -> Mainmenu
3. Create a few new menu items and make sure they are set to be submenu items of one or more of the mainmenu items you created earlier.
4. Go to Extensions -> Module Manager and edit the Sub menu module. Change the position parameter to “level2_menu”. On the right you’ll see more parameter options and you only have to change a few of them, Start level = 1, End level = 2 and under the advanced parameters set Menu Class Suffix = sub and Module Class Suffix = sub
5. Save the module, make sure it is published and have a look at the front-end of your site. If all went well you will now see some sub-menu items appear in the sidebar when you click trough the main horizontal menu, now that is Joomla! 1.5 split menu feature and it’s great.

Position “content_top” is a position above the content area and “content_bottom” is a position below the content area, you can just publish modules there if you want or need too.

Position “sidebar_top” is a position above the “level2_menu” position and “sidebar_bottom” is a position below that menu, you can just publish modules there if you want or need too.

Position “footer” is a position at the bottom of the site and you can publish modules there if you want or need to and the same counts for copyright although that is styled by CSS to just hold a oneliner with a copyright text, that would be done with a “Custom HTML” type module.