How to Edit the Menu in the Template System

 

The site title and your site links menu are created from a file on your site called “menu.txt”. You can edit the menu.txt file with any editor that will save the file as a plain text file.

Here is the small section of a web page that contains the site menu.

 

  

 Here are the contents of the example menu.txt file for the menu shown above:

 

# menu.txt for use with the showpage.php script

# lines starting with '#' are notes that are ignored by the script

# start a line with 'title' to set the site title

# other lines, start with just the root of the page 'index' for 'index.html'/'index.php'

#

title Law Web Site Template System

index Site Home

syllabus Course Syllabus

handouts Course Handouts

contact Contact

hours Office Hours

 

 

Starts with:
#	The lines starting with “#” are ignored as noted. These lines can be used as notes, or to temporarily remove a link from your menu.
title	The line starting with “title” sets the site title in the larger font (as specified in the [title] area(s) in the template).
template	To set an alternate template, start a line with the word “template” and follow with the full path to the alternate template file. See the templates page for details
	All other lines start with the root file name, then a space, and followed with the test to make up the menu entry. There are advanced menu features, shown below, that are based upon special characters in the root file name.

You are not required to add all pages to your site menu, instead, you may insert links into any page to link to any other page. (See editing help for more details)

 

Advanced Menu Features

 

The appearance of menu links is set by a style sheet specified in the template. Regular menu entries are given the style class “navmenu”. Three other menu styles are available, set by the first characters of the root file name:

 

Starts with:	Style Class:	Example root file name:	Description:
..	navup	../pagename	Generally for moving up one directory level
/	navtitle	/index.php	To go to the root of the site, or home directory
-	navsub	-handouts/assignments	To go to a subfolder or subordinate page
http://	navmenu	http://www.westlaw.com/	To open a new browser window to the page specified
anything else	navmenu	links	To jump to a regular page on your site (i.e. links.php)

 

In the case of the dash, the dash itself is removed and “.php” appended before the link is made. For the slash “/” and dot-dot “..” links, no “.php” is appended.