AutoMenu and Menu Breadcrumb work great for breadcrumbs... until my site gets HUGE.

Posted by owntheweb on October 13, 2009 at 9:47pm

Hello,
I'm currently using Menu Breadcrumb and AutoMenu modules to keep breadcrumbs consistent and useful throughout a couple websites, one being http://www.spacefoundation.org/education .

Everything is working great right now. When different types of nodes are created, they automatically get added to an appropriate submenu location (disabled so not visible in the menu) using AutoMenu. Menu Breadcrumb then uses the menu structure, disabled or not, to show the breadcrumbs I want.

However, this is slowly starting to become a burdon when editing the menu. There are a growing number of disabled links to sift through to make any changes to the physical menu. The browser is starting to run slower as a result when editing this page.

Should I be concerned? I'm guessing yes. Would Node breadcrumb module work better? Are there other options to keep breadcrumbs custom, automated, but still let me set the breadcrumbs for specific nodes (like a sub-page of a generic page node like 'about us' -> 'some other sub-page'). Should I get into some taxonomy or something?

I look forward to any thoughts you may have. Thank you much in advance! :)

Comments

Overly complicated? Sorry to

Posted by owntheweb on October 14, 2009 at 10:00pm

Overly complicated? Sorry to bug. This topic is eating on me.

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You're not alone. Have you

Posted by sp_key on October 21, 2009 at 11:03pm

You're not alone.

Have you tried this custom breadcrumbs? Apparently it's working side by side with pathauto though I can't make it work the way I want but you might wanna have a look.

I might implement your solution instead :)

Btw, I just realised the hint

Posted by sp_key on October 21, 2009 at 11:15pm

Btw, I just realised the hint on your post.
I just thought, why don't you swap menus then?
That way you get breadcrumb working without using a module?

Lemme know if this doesn't sound a good choice...

I'm not sure I follow 'this

Posted by owntheweb on October 22, 2009 at 3:00pm

I'm not sure I follow 'this custom breadcrumbs'. Also, what was the hint on my post? Swap which menus? There's only one. :) (sorry my coffee hasn't set in yet today, I do appreciate the feedback)

I don't feel connecting breadcrumbs directly along side pathauto is the best solution, especially since the 'page' content type could be a child to another page, messing that whole scheme up. Pages are the exception on my site and don't use pathauto (so that I can make the url match the page depth). I set the path manually per 'page'.

Maybe I should just make all pages top level in url and use pathauto for ALL content? That way I could just use pathauto based breadcrumbs. The down side of that solution is I may lose some SEO/organizational benefits.

I'm glad the my original solution may help you. Just be warned that it gets sluggish to maintain as the site gets much bigger.

Let me know if that helps clarify. I'm open to ideas. Thanks again. :D

Worlds to explore. Worlds to create.
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Hi ultrus, You said

Posted by sp_key on October 22, 2009 at 3:36pm

Hi ultrus,

You said breadcrumbs work with navigation menu which was something I wasn't aware of (that was the "hint" for my solution).
So my suggesiton was whether you could replace your primary with your navigation menu.
Maybe you could just move your content to the navigation menu making it your "new primary menu".
That way you wouldn't need a module?
I don't know if this is a good idea but I would like to hear your view on this since I'm not that experienced with drupal.

[quote]Maybe I should just make all pages top level in url and use pathauto for ALL content? That way I could just use pathauto based breadcrumbs. The down side of that solution is I may lose some SEO/organizational benefits.[/quote]

Isn't it better from SEO point of view to have most content on top level?

sp_key, ah got your 'hint'.

Posted by owntheweb on October 22, 2009 at 5:32pm

sp_key,
ah got your 'hint'. :) Actually, breadcrumbs only work with the menu if you install the 'menu breadcrumb' module (90% sure on this). For my site, I created an additional 'educational' menu where all the links are and left 'primary' and 'navigation' menus alone. I show the 'navigation' menu that Drupal provides by default under the 'educational' menu, visible when I'm logged in as an admin. So it's sort of close to what you were suggesting.

Nah, it's not really better to have most content top level if it's not top level content. The general trend I'm seeing looks like this:

The most important consideration is how easily accessible and easy to navigate your site is. Simply including tens or hundreds of top level pages is not likely to give the clean navigation system that your user's require even though it will help provide the level of content you should be looking for. One solution is to use a proper hierarchy of internal pages. Under each of the major pages of your site include several sub pages, concentrating on different or more specific keywords and topics. This allows you to target a huge number of your most relevant keywords without creating a site that is difficult to get to grips with.

If it appears helpful to users, it generally appears helpful to google bots as one of the rules.

Let me know if that helps.

Worlds to explore. Worlds to create.
Blog: http://www.christopherstevens.cc/blog
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/owntheweb