By RichieRich on
Hi there,
I created a new menu and added a link to an unpublished nodes. My plan was to add links to about 40 new nodes before publishing them all together once I was happy withe menu layout.
However, I noticed that links to the unpublished nodes don't appear in the menu administration interface. They are all hidden until the node is published. This makes it impossible to build up any sort of heirarchy.
I can understand that the menu links shouldn't to the user, but not showing them to the menu designer is just plain nuts. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong here, if so, please tell met I'm nuts and show me the way!
Thanks,
Rich
Comments
I see what you mean. It
I see what you mean. It doesn't show up under admin/build/menu. The menu setting is only available from the node edit page. I can't say this is unexpected. It seems like a reasonable thing, to basically eliminate unpublished items form other parts of the site. What I usually do when building a menu is to use dummy paths, like just node/1 or just to get the menu built. Then, when my pages are done I edit the menu links, adding the correct paths.
Reasonable?
I don't see what you mean to be honest. This view is only available to the administrator so he or she should be able to see which items have been added to the menu irrespective of whether the nodes which they are connected to are published or not. This doesn't affect site-level visiblity to non-administrators so I'm not sure how it's related ot eliminating the the possiblity of unpublished items appearing on the site.
Your approach is okay, but it doesn't enable you to simultaneously enable all new links. You'll get them appearing one by one as you add the correct paths. I'm working on a live site so the desired behaviour to be able to design the new menu entries in full before publishing all new nodes simultaneously. That way all the new menu entries appear at the same time.
There's clearly a distinction between what the site designer should be able to see and what the user can see which Drupal is failing to recognise with this feature.
"That way all the new menu
"That way all the new menu entries appear at the same time."
How are you proposing to add live menu items that link to nodes that are not published? People will see the menu item, but it won't work? That doesn't sound good.
Look at it this way - if you have a node that appears in multiple menus, and you unpublish the node, you most likely want it to automatically disappear from all the menus. You don't want to have to track it down everywhere and remove it. When you publish it, it will re-appear. You couldn't have that behavior and still add unpublished nodes to menus.
No
David, you haven't read what I've posted carefully.
Here's my desired workflow:
1) I create the nodes, all of which are unpublished.
2) I design the menu
3) I publish all of the nodes simultaneously.
I'm making a distinction between the design view of the site and the site which users see. This is basic functionality which Drupal isn't currently offering. At no point will the user be able to click on a menu item which links to an unpublished nodes.
Yes, when you unpublish a node you want it to disappear from all public menus, but you don't want it to appear from the administrator's menu. I'm having difficult understanding why you can't grasp this point.
Thanks anyway though,
Rich
"I'm having difficult
"I'm having difficult understanding why you can't grasp this point."
Well, maybe you aren't clearly communicating your point. I'm only trying to help, and also the only one trying to.
hmmm
Thanks for helping me out with the Webform issue. Really apprciated (there's a bunch of other people with the same problem and I bet that the cause is the same).
Also, I appreciate that you're the only one taking the time to reply. I just got a bit infuriated that you didn't understand what I was trying to say.
Basically, just because something isn't published it shouldn't be hidden from the administrator. For example, it would clearly be unreasonable to hide the contents of a node from a site administrator simply because the node is unpublished.
By the same token, in the administration view of the menu (where you can drag menu entries around) the entries should still appear irrespective of whether or not the node which they are linked to is enabled or not. This allows you to design a menu which links to unpublished nodes and shouldn't have affect on what users can see.
Hiding the entries from the administrator has no value and is extremely confusing. Maybe an indication of whether the links is published or unpublished would be helpful, but at the very least the link should be shown.
Perhaps the functionality will change in Drupal 7.
Rich
You're welcome, regarding the
You're welcome, regarding the webforms. I understand what you are saying. The issue here seems to be in philosophy. Rights to create menus and rights to edit nodes are separate. The only advice I can give is to modify your workflow. The way I create my menus is the way I do it because it works in Drupal, and isn't necessarily my ideal way of doing it. Changing your workflow may be your only option, as this is how the menus seem to work. If you want to suggest a change, I believe you can do that creating a new issue in the drupal project queue. The problem, of course, is even they decide to change that, it will take a long time. Thus, you'll need a workaround anyway. The other option is to create a new module that modifies the way this works. Maybe someone else would be interested in it. Then, there is always the hope that this is wrong and someone point that out and tell you how to do this the way you want, since I don't know.
Thanks David
Good points. I've decided on a different workflow for my current problem. Essentially I'm building an entirely new menu for my Japanese content. I've decided that I'll finish or the nodes and publish them before they are added to any menu. I'll then create the menu but I don't assign the block which contains the menu to a region until I've added all links to it.
There will be a period of around half an hour where I have published nodes with no links pointing to them but this shouldn't be too much of a problem (google isn't that fast).
Thanks, Rich
This looks like #460408:
This looks like #460408: Cannot administer menu item/link if it points to an unpublished node.
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
You're right, it is the same
You're right, it is the same issue. Possibly the worst design 'feature' in Drupal 6 in my opinion. I get irritated every time I think about it...grrrrrgh