By Cablestein on

I'd like to create a left-side menu like this:

http://webdev.humeimaging.com/ktest/menu.png

-It would appear only on a certain group of nodes, ie nodes marked with "Fruit" and/or specific nodes I define
-It would take the place of the default left-side bar that appears in the other areas of the site
-Ideally any currently selected link within that menu tree would be hilighted
-Ideally the menu nvaigation would occur locally with JS/dhtml/ajax/whatever, ie when someone clicks sub-section, the sub-section opens up right away and doesn't refresh the page
-The menu should be end-user sortable/editable through administration area

Questions:

1 - In the web world, what is a menu like that actually called? "Hierarchical menu"? "Menu tree"? "A menu with sub-sections within sub-sections"?

2 - Anyone here know of a good Drupal module that does this kind of stuff? Whenever I search the modules, a lot of them don't include a screenshot, or their explanation of features isn't complete... so there could be something out there. Not sure what terms to search for either.

3 - If I have to explore a custom php/sql thing, how easy is it to replace the left-side menu only on specific nodes?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

Cablestein’s picture

Cablestein commented

bump

iwant2fly’s picture

iwant2fly commented

I am relatively new to drupal and not an expert, but this doesn't seem too hard to do. There are several ways of going about this, but I would recommend doing the following things. Most of what you want to do can be roughly done with the default install.

1. Play with the built in Drupal Menu system. When you create a page you have a "Menu Settings" section. You can pick where each page show up in the menu, and at what level. You can also choose whether menu's are automatically expanded or not.
2. Learn about Taxonomy. You can "tag" each page with a term or multiple terms, and build menu's based on those terms. Very powerful and has pretty ok documentation for a beginner.
3. Blocks - Menu's can be placed in blocks and blocks can be arranged wherever you like. (You can also disable the default navigation block)
3. Modules - There are a ton of menu modules if you are looking for something specific. Nice Menu's has some cool features if you are looking for something flashier.

My advice. Get your menu's working then work on the flashy stuff (i.e. colors, auto expansion, etc.) Sorry I am not an expert enough to give you step by step directions. You will be better off in the end anyway taking the time to learn about the menu's and taxonomy in Drupal.

markconroy’s picture

markconroy commented

Just to add to 1) above. When you have your menus set up, you will need to click on 'Expand' beside the link that has the sub-menu, under the menu configuration (Admin >> Site Building >> Menus >> Your Menu).

You might also like the dhtml menu module:

http://drupal.org/project/dhtml_menu

============

Drupal Core Maintainer for "Out of the Box" Initiative.

Cablestein’s picture

Cablestein commented

Thanks guys!

With your comments I was pushed to take a second look at menu controls, and I was able to achieve 80% of what I wanted with native drupal stuff and the module Mark mentioned.

Cheers