How to show sub menus separately with categories

Hi Charles,

Can you post some mockup html that shows what you want it to generate? How many levels deep with the menu be?

Thanks!

It would just be two levels deep .

Another question could I change the design so the News category would have a slightly different design layout to say products?

Hi Charles,

We'll have tackle one problem at a time, so lets start with splitting up the menus.

We've been adding some features to the next version to make this easier. I've updated your /cmsAdmin/lib/viewer_functions.php as follows:

- Search for _isSelected
- Replace that line (around line 558) with this: (this will be in v1.28)
list($selectedRootNum) = preg_split('/:/', @$selectedCategory['lineage'],-1,PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY); // root num of selected records branch
$category['_isSelected'] = (int) ($category['num'] == $options['selectedCategoryNum']);
$category['_isAncestorSelected'] = $selectedCategory && preg_match("/:{$selectedCategory['num']}/", $category['lineage']) && !$category['_isSelected'];
$category['_isDescendantSelected'] = $selectedCategory && preg_match("/:{$category['num']}:/", $selectedCategory['lineage']) && !$category['_isSelected'];
$category['_isSelectedBranch'] = $selectedCategory && preg_match("/:{$selectedRootNum}:/", $category['lineage']);

Next, I've updated your /cms/categoryList.php file as follows:
<?php foreach ($categoryRecords as $categoryRecord): ?>
<?php if ($categoryRecord['depth'] != 0) { continue; } ?>

<?php if ($categoryRecord['_isSelectedBranch']): ?>
<li><b><a href="<?php echo $categoryRecord['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?></a></b></li>
<?php else: ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $categoryRecord['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?></a></li>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>

Which basically means don't show any items that aren't at depth 0 which means root items. And I've added this block to show sublevel items:
<div id ="subCat">
<?php foreach ($categoryRecords as $categoryRecord): ?>
<?php if ($categoryRecord['depth'] == 0) { continue; } ?>
<?php if (!$categoryRecord['_isSelectedBranch']) { continue; } ?>

<?php if ($categoryRecord['_isSelected']): ?>
<li><b><a href="<?php echo $categoryRecord['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?></a></b></li>
<?php else: ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $categoryRecord['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $categoryRecord['name'] ?></a></li>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>
</div>

Which means, skip root items, and only show menu items in selected branch (meaning root parent is selected).

Here's a working link: http://www.mercerdesign.biz/cms/categoryList.php?Products-2

You'll notice the sub menu needs to be styled but I'll leave that to you.

Hope that helps!

Dave - you're a gem thanks so much for your time and effort on this its working fine now.

One last thing on this which would make it really powerful tool - could I change the design layout for say Products so the layout would be different in nature than News?

Hi Charles,

Yes you can, the first step would be to create a mockup of how you want those two sections to look.

Let me know when you get that far and we can work on the next step.