Mulitlevel drop down menu or pages?

okrk

I am new to the new smugmug and i am trying to understand the use hierarchy of pages, folders and galleries. On my old site i built a multilevel drop-down menu to navigate to galleries 3 or 4 levels deep. This made a very clear clean way for users to locate specific galleries. But this is not possible on the new site. So i am trying to do a similar thing using pages and folders but i am having a hard time building a graphical system that can allow users an easy way to navigate multiple levels.

For example i have sports events that are categorized by sport-school-JV/V-boys/girls-date. Do i have to set up a separate page for each level to drill down to the next level? Or is there an easier way?

Are there any good examples for how to set up a site with this level of organization. All of the example sites or help documents only assume one to two levels of organization?

I have been experimenting with the new system with mixed results. I wish they would add multilevel menu support that would make things much easier.

Thanks

beardedgit

Multi-level dropdown menus can be created with the nav menu content block by nesting elements beneath others.

Have a look at http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1222523-customization-how-do-i-make-a-navigation-menu- and at http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=242136

ChancyRat

There is a 2-layer limit for the left-navbar menu, but no limit for the top navbar.
Which one did you want to build?
If the top navbar, you can have the sub-menus open. When adding a link to a top-level folder, click the option to "Open Folder Contents", which will populate the sub-folders.

If you have folders within folders, add each subfolder separately and drag them in place under and to the right of the main folder. One example below.

Will this serve you need or are you asking for something different?

Allen

You can see my indenting here for more layers. Try not to put multiple levels too far to the right
on the main or the lower levels might disappear off the right of the browser window.

ChancyRat

Allen wrote: »

You can see my indenting here for more layers. Try not to put multiple levels too far to the right
on the main or the lower levels might disappear off the right of the window.

Allen, January is misspelled.

Allen

ChancyRat wrote: »

Allen, January is misspelled.

Picky ... picky ... picky
Hey, I'm an enginear, not supposed to be able to speel.

Ha, had three of them like that, thanks.

ChancyRat

Allen wrote: »

Picky ... picky ... picky
Hey, I'm an enginear, not supposed to be able to speel.

Ha, had three of them like that, thanks.

Hey, your HTML rocks so who cares about silly little 'ole months.

okrk

Allen wrote: »

You can see my indenting here for more layers. Try not to put multiple levels too far to the right
on the main or the lower levels might disappear off the right of the browser window.

I have tried this but you have to set the intermediate menu item links (ones that do go to a particular page) to something. What are you setting them to? I used custom url and set the url to http://. This kind of works but not with mobile phones.

I haven't yet tried to set the intermediate links to some message page. So if someone clicks on it it will display a message stating that they should select a gallery page from the menu. That is a hokey work around but it may work.

I contacted smugmug about this and got this response.

Sebastian Hosche
OCT 29, 2013 | 05:32AM PDT
Hi Rich,

Thank you for contacting SmugMug. The limit to how many levels a menu can display on a mobile device is at 2. Any additional levels from the menu will not be displayed. The issue with your menu is that you haven't set up proper links for the Soccer items and below. Except for the deepest level, none of the items has any valid links set up. That's why visitors on a mobile device cannot click on the items in the soccer menu.
To correct the issue, you would need to add proper links for all the items in the Soccer menu. Instead of manually pasting in links, you could also use the "page I choose" option and select the page in question.

I hope this has helped. If you have any questions, please let us know.


Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero

ChancyRat

I have tried this but you have to set the intermediate menu item links (ones that do go to a particular page) to something. What are you setting them to? I used custom url and set the url to http://. This kind of works but not with mobile phones.

I haven't yet tried to set the intermediate links to some message page. So if someone clicks on it it will display a message stating that they should select a gallery page from the menu. That is a hokey work around but it may work.

I am not sure what you mean by the 2nd para., but regarding the first, when you edit the link, use "Page/Choose", and then navigate to the folder or gallery you want to link to, click it to add it.

okrk

ChancyRat wrote: »

I am not sure what you mean by the 2nd para., but regarding the first, when you edit the link, use "Page/Choose", and then navigate to the folder or gallery you want to link to, click it to add it.

I am talking about menu links that dont go anywhere - they just point to other levels in the menu. So they should not take the user anywhere other than to expand the menu to the next level.

ChancyRat

okrk wrote: »

I am talking about menu links that dont go anywhere - they just point to other levels in the menu. So they should not take the user anywhere other than to expand the menu to the next level.

You are right, I see one cannot have a text-only level. By default the menu assumes all links are - well, URL links, to either folders or galleries or pages.

You can give a name to the highest level folder/link, that is not the same name as the actual folder itself. You can also turn off the "Include folder contents" option. Then nest your specific galleries under this folder. Are you pulling galleries from different folders, together for one menu item? You can do this, but I see the starting folder still must have a link to something.

okrk

ChancyRat wrote: »

You are right, I see one cannot have a text-only level. By default the menu assumes all links are - well, URL links, to either folders or galleries or pages.

You can give a name to the highest level folder/link, that is not the same name as the actual folder itself. You can also turn off the "Include folder contents" option. Then nest your specific galleries under this folder. Are you pulling galleries from different folders, together for one menu item? You can do this, but I see the starting folder still must have a link to something.

Yes that works fine but as i said before, also confirmed by smugmug, you cant see more than 2 levels of any menu on a smartphone. So it is not ideal. Which gets back to my original question.

How can one mimic a dropdown menu system utilizing the current system of pages,folders,galleries?

Esentially throwing away the dropdown menu. It wont be as clean as a simple dropdown but it could work. Would you have to create a page for each level in your menu with each page calling folders or other pages? I have tried it but it gets real cumbersome to follow and is difficult to maintain the site. Things are supposed to be getting easier.


Is there any real good tutorial for how to set up linking pages/folders integrated in the new system?

Not just an overview. I have watched all the videos i could find. None of them address how to tie them all together with multi level links. Most are just single level menu calls to pages. When you start mixing pages and folders things start getting confusing.

I know this is kind of rambling but it is hard to describe.
Basically i want to mimic a multilevel menu using the new tools that we have.

Thanks

denisegoldberg

okrk wrote: »

How can one mimic a dropdown menu system utilizing the current system of pages,folders,galleries?

Esentially throwing away the dropdown menu. It wont be as clean as a simple dropdown but it could work. Would you have to create a page for each level in your menu with each page calling folders or other pages? I have tried it but it gets real cumbersome to follow and is difficult to maintain the site. Things are supposed to be getting easier.

Is there any real good tutorial for how to set up linking pages/folders integrated in the new system?

Why don't you set up your folder structure to mimic your menu? You shouldn't need any pages at all. Folder to folder to <however many levels you need> to gallery.

If you look at the Travel folder on my site that's essentially what you get. Travel is a folder. It contains folders that represent trips. Each "trip" folder contains galleries from the trip. There isn't anything special here - I just exposed the folder structure. Here's a direct link to my Travel folder (in case seeing an example helps) - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Travel.

I find multi-level menus on a computer to be somewhat annoying if they go beyond two levels; I can't imagine using one on a phone.

--- Denise

ChancyRat

This may be entirely off-track, but it is one way to side-step a navbar.
I have no idea what it would look like on a smartphone.
This is a work in progress for me but I want a visitor Sitemap. Code exists to remove the thumbnails and clump the links together. You can construct the groups anyway you want. You can then add text blocks as you see fit, as headers.

This code: http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/Gallery-list
This thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241108

Misc. notes:
- It will be a bit of a management issue if I change my site around a lot.
- I'm not happy with the spacing currently but haven't had time to request CSS help to fix this.
- Instead of one page with a full Sitemap of all your site, you could set up many pages with specialized Sitemaps.

ChancyRat

The links in the image are Folder and Gallery Blocks. The far left links are folder blocks. The indented links a gallery block. The block lets me choose the galleries. Choosing them is a process of left clicking, and they show up on the screen in the order they were clicked.

snakeey11

ChancyRat wrote: »

You are right, I see one cannot have a text-only level. By default the menu assumes all links are - well, URL links, to either folders or galleries or pages.

Actually, you can have a text-only item if its URL is left empty. I agree that this might not be as clear as, say, a dedicated "heading"-type item, but it should work in the meantime.

-Mike

okrk

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Why don't you set up your folder structure to mimic your menu? You shouldn't need any pages at all. Folder to folder to <however many levels you need> to gallery.

If you look at the Travel folder on my site that's essentially what you get. Travel is a folder. It contains folders that represent trips. Each "trip" folder contains galleries from the trip. There isn't anything special here - I just exposed the folder structure. Here's a direct link to my Travel folder (in case seeing an example helps) - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Travel.

I find multi-level menus on a computer to be somewhat annoying if they go beyond two levels; I can't imagine using one on a phone.

--- Denise

Yes i kind of thought you could do that. I tried it but had some problems. How do you set up your pages? Do you even use pages? Is "Gallery" your top level folder with all folders under that? How do you display each page when the user clicks into a folder.

Thanks
Rich

okrk

ChancyRat wrote: »

The links in the image are Folder and Gallery Blocks. The far left links are folder blocks. The indented links a gallery block. The block lets me choose the galleries. Choosing them is a process of left clicking, and they show up on the screen in the order they were clicked.

Very interesting i will investigate this.

Thanks
Rich

ChancyRat

snakeey11 wrote: »

Actually, you can have a text-only item if its URL is left empty. I agree that this might not be as clear as, say, a dedicated "heading"-type item, but it should work in the meantime.

-Mike

Oh - well, that may be the solution totally!

denisegoldberg

okrk wrote: »

Yes i kind of thought you could do that. I tried it but had some problems. How do you set up your pages? Do you even use pages? Is "Gallery" your top level folder with all folders under that? How do you display each page when the user clicks into a folder.

Thanks
Rich

"gallery" is a page that contains folders. I wanted to specify the order of the folders so the default browse page wouldn't work for me. I've taken a screen shot of the element on that page, attached below.

On the Gallery page I included the Travel folder. When you open the Travel folder you see the Folders within Travel. When you click on a lower level folder you see the contents of that folder (which is galleries, folders, or both).

--- Denise

denisegoldberg

denisegoldberg wrote: »

continued...
On the Gallery page I included the Travel folder. When you open the Travel folder you see the Folders within Travel. When you click on a lower level folder you see the contents of that folder (which is galleries, folders, or both).

Here's a screen shot from Organizer of my Travel folder.

--- Denise

okrk

denisegoldberg wrote: »

"gallery" is a page that contains folders. I wanted to specify the order of the folders so the default browse page wouldn't work for me. I've taken a screen shot of the element on that page, attached below.

On the Gallery page I included the Travel folder. When you open the Travel folder you see the Folders within Travel. When you click on a lower level folder you see the contents of that folder (which is galleries, folders, or both).

--- Denise

Thanks for your help all i needed was a little explanation. I guess the hardest concept is that there is a common page that isn't really defined and you can call other pages from that page. Once you get that then it all makes sense. Interesting that none of the tutorials really emphasize that. My site is now organized according to my folder structure and it works pretty good. I deleted all of my multilevel menu links and just have a single level menu which fixes the mobile device issue.

Thanls
Rich

denisegoldberg

okrk wrote: »

Thanks for your help all i needed was a little explanation. I guess the hardest concept is that there is a common page that isn't really defined and you can call other pages from that page. Once you get that then it all makes sense. Interesting that none of the tutorials really emphasize that. My site is now organized according to my folder structure and it works pretty good. I deleted all of my multilevel menu links and just have a single level menu which fixes the mobile device issue.

Thanls
Rich

That's awesome, glad I could help!

--- Denise