Okay, imagine a basic SS site layout, two-level menu down the left, some content in the middle, and a side bar on the right.

What I'd like to do for one of the first-level menu items is prevent it appearing in the menu structure on the left, and instead build it into the side bar on the right.

My first thought was a simple hack inside <% control Menu(1) %>, something like:

<% if $MenuTitle.XML != 'My Headline' %>
show the item
<% end_if %>

and then in the side bar on the right doing the exact opposite, so that ONLY the node I want, plus its children appear.

But this causes a parsing error - I'm probably breaking a whole load of SS syntax rules that I know nothing of.

So, can anybody suggest the *correct* way of doing this? Either doing it the *proper* SS way, or by cleaning up my hack?

jf\

The 'SS' way of doing it would be to add a field to Page.php that was 'ShowOnlyInSideMenu' (or whatever) that could then be a check box in the cms. if it is checked then you can do a simple if statment in the template!

If you don't want it showing in the CMS, just dont add the checkbox to it!

I generally don't want my home page included on the side menu because I handle it differently to other pages. I just uncheck 'show in menu' in the CMS. The right menu would then call a specific page control. You could have extra checkboxes in the CMS but if the intention is to hand the site over to a client, that sounds too much like a problem waiting to happen - better to hard code it.

@Pigeon Thanks for the suggestion. Can I get a bit more detail?

I set up a new field in Page.php, let's call it "MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu". It might be a checkbox exposed in the CMS or I might keep it hidden away from the client.

Once that's done, how do I test for it inside the <% control Menu(1) %> loop?

I imagine it's something like <% if MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu = 1 %>don't show the item<% end_if %>, but what is the correct syntax? Or is there a more elegant way of testing for its presence?

jf\

@ bruceb, Thanks also for your suggestion.

So, I uncheck 'show in menu', no problem.

However, I'm not sure about how I could then set up a 'specific page control' to grab that specific node and its child nodes. Could you explain a little further please?

Thanks,

jf\

Junglefish,

This is how i would do it:

class Page extends SiteTree {
...
public static $db = array(
"MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu" => "Boolean"
);

...
function getCMSFields() {
$fields = parent::getCMSFields();
...
$fields->addFieldToTab('Root.Behaviour', new CheckboxField('MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu', 'Show in right menu?'),'ShowInSearch');
...
return $fields;
}
...
}

class Page_Controller extends ContentController {
...
function RightMenu() {
return DataObject::get('Page','`MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu` = 1');
}
...
}

Then, in the template:

...
<% control RightMenu %>
<li><a href="$Link" title="Go to the $Title.XML page" class="$LinkingMode">$MenuTitle.XML</a></li>
<% end_control %>
...

This means, if a user checks the 'show in right menu' or whatever, then it shows in that menu. To stop it appearing in both the user would have to uncheck the 'show in menus'. If you only wanted it to show in one or the other, then you can modify the Menu() function so it excludes items with MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu and then use this:

function RightMenu() {
return DataObject::get('Page','`MoveItemFromLeftMenuToRightMenu` = 1 AND `ShowInMenus` = 1');
}

:)

PS: You don't have to give the user a check-box of course, you could code in the value, BUT then what about when they make new pages?

Pigeon's reply is much more elegant than what I was suggesting but you will definitely need to document it clearly for the client.

General info on using controls is here:
http://doc.silverstripe.org/doku.php?id=built-in-page-controls

There's lots of good solutions suggested here :-) but I'd like to add that you could still do something like your first try. Only: the <% if %> structure doesn't (yet?) seem to support the != operator. A workaround could be:

<% if MenuTitle = 'My Headline' %><% else %> [your code goes here] <% end_if %>  

I think this might also be a 'Silverstripe way' as the template gets to decide what goes where in the display...