oregonpackagedtravel.com

This site is an existing client of mine. I built all the backend functionality, but now they are considering migrating to a CMS. I naturally recommended Drupal.

They want to keep the current graphic design and interface. Converting the data to Drupal won't be a problem, but what about the horizontal navigation? I suppose this can simply be part of the header. It obviously won't be tied to the dynamic navigation menu. In fact, the built-in navigation block menu will be completely disabled. Will this cause any problems?

Also, what about the search feature? Can a custom block be created to accommodate the additional drop-down criteria?

All comments/input is greatly appreciated.

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

The simplest way would be to set your primary and secondary links to the same menu item, drupal should then display the appropriate child secondary links when the primary link is clicked, and your theme could then just display the secondary links in a different way. Some of the comments seem to indicate that this isn't terribly reliable though, but I haven't tried it. Worth a shot...

Alternatively, you could use a phptemplate theme and use some php logic to display the appropriate secondary menu. Off the top of my head I would think your template would choose which menu to be displayed based on taxonomy terms, path setting, or both. You could probably even using the taxonomy_theme module to do this and define a node theme for each term or path that contains the appropriate menu.

johnhanley’s picture

Thanks for your reply.

I believe your latter suggestion sounds like the way to go. This could be somewhat involved, but I'm willing to invest some of my own time to make it work.

Anonymous’s picture

Also check out the response to this one:

http://drupal.org/node/84975

You can set up menus to appear only on certain pages and paths. If you can assure enough structure to your site, that works pretty well. One problem is that it's pretty much impossible this way to have a default submenu that displays on pages where no other menu is set to show. And if you need to go by taxonomy, or can't guarantee enough path structure to do it, you'll need to roll your own with a phptemplate.

johnhanley’s picture

I'm putting together a bid and the link you provided gives me additional ideas and insight. Many thanks!

PAAHCweb’s picture

I haven't seen this anywhere in the handbook or forum.

The simplest way would be to set your primary and secondary links to the same menu item, drupal should then display the appropriate child secondary links when the primary link is clicked

Can you please go into a little more detail on how this is done (give a short example)? Is it done in page.tpl.php, in admin/themes/settings/, or...?

Thx,
D. Lynn

Anonymous’s picture

There's nothing to give as an example. Just go to admin/settings/menus and pick the same menu for primary and secondary links. That's it. If that menu has a structure like

Parent 1
-- Child 1
-- Child 2
Parent 2
-- Child 3
-- Child 4

Then the appropriate children of parent 1/2 will show up as secondary links when the parent or sibling is active.

The down side to this approach is that if you have a page that is outside of the menu structure, no secondary links will show up.

PAAHCweb’s picture

That clears it up very well, thanks!