To add a new menu, you need to open the Menu Manager. Open the Administrator interface (by pointing the browser window to http://localhost/joomlasite/administrator). From the menu bar, select Menus ➤ Menu Manager. When the Menu Manager opens, click the New icon in the toolbar to create a new menu. You’ll see a screen for entering information about the new menu, as shown in Figure 7-1. You want the menu title to be Electronic Products on the web site, so enter that text in the Title field.
For reference, Table 7-1 gives a brief description of the fields on the Menu Manager: Add Menu screen.
Table 7-2 gives a brief description of the icons on the Menu Manager: Add Menu screen’s toolbar.
After entering the information for the new menu, click the Save & Close icon. Upon saving the menu, you’ll find it listed in the Menu Manager, as shown in Figure 7-2.
To display the menu item from the front end, activate it via the Module Manager. Click the Add a Module for This Menu Type link shown under the Linked Modules column of the Electronic Products menu. The Module Manager opens as shown in Figure 7-3. In the Title field, enter the module title as Electronic Range. From the Select Menu drop-down list, select the menu that you want to display through this module (i.e., the Electronic Products menu). Let’s display this menu to appear at the bottom of the site, so select the footer option from the Position drop-down list.
■ Note The menu has to be activated via the Module Manager. The creation of the module confirms the appearance of the menu at the specified location.
1. Creating Menu Items
You can now add menu items to the Electronic Products menu. Click the Electronic Products menu title from the Menu Manager: Menus page to open it in edit mode. You can also check its checkbox and click Edit icon from the toolbar at the top. You’ll see a Menu Manager: Menu Items page that will contain a listing of all the menu items created in this menu, as shown in Figure 7-4. At the moment, it is empty because you have not yet created any menu items in this menu.
Click the New icon to create menu items in this menu. You’ll see a screen to enter information for the new menu item (see Figure 7-5).
In the Title field, enter the title of the menu item. It can be any text. Because you will be creating one menu item and editing the same menu item to be used for different menu item types, specify the title of this menu item as New Electronics Among Cameras And Cell Phones.
As usual, the Alias field specifies a sort of secondary name for the title and can be left blank. If it is specified, it must be lowercase and use hyphens instead of spaces. Let’s specify the alias as new electronics.
The Link field is automatically filled to point to the type of contents you want to display via this menu item. This field cannot be edited.
The Target Window field is used to specify where the contents of the articles are supposed to appear.
The available options are Parent, New Window With Navigation, and New Without Navigation. If the Parent option is selected, the selected information will be displayed in the current window; if New Window With Navigation is selected, the desired contents will be displayed in a new browser window containing navigation controls to move among the web pages. If New Without Navigation is selected, the contents will be displayed in a new browser window without navigation controls. Let’s select the Parent option.
The Menu Location field is used to specify the menu name under which this menu item will be displayed (the current menu name you are dealing with appears by default). Because you want the menu item to appear under the Electronic Products menu, set the Menu Location field to Electronic Products.
In the Parent Item field, you can specify whether the menu item is a top-level menu item or a submenu of an existing menu item. Because there is no other menu item present in this menu and it is the first menu item of this menu, there is only one option: Menu Item Root (the current menu item will appear at the top of the hierarchy, not as a submenu).
■ Note When you define a parent item, the menu items will appear in a drop-down format.
Set the Status field to Published (the default) to make this menu item visible on the web site. Set the Access field to Public to allow all visitors to access the menu item.
The Menu Item Type combo box in Figure 7-5 enables you to select the menu item type, which decides the type of content that the menu item will display. The Menu Item Type combo box will display the available menu item type categories, as shown in Figure 7-6.
A brief description of the menu item type categories follows:
- Articles: Designed to display article categories and articles that include featured articles and archived articles
- Configuration Manager: Designed to display site configuration and template parameter options
- Contacts: Designed to display contact categories and contact(s) that may be featured contacts or contacts of specific category
- Newsfeeds: Designed to display newsfeed categories and newsfeed(s) of a specific category.
- Search: Designed to display a search form and search results
- Smart Search: Designed to display a search form with extra options for precise search results
- System Links: Designed to display menu headings, link to external or internal URL, text separator and alias to another menu item
- Tags: Designed to display list of tags, items that are tagged and items with specific tags
- Users Manager: Designed to display forms that can be used to register a user, enable a user to login, display and edit a user’s profile, reset a user’s password and reminds username (if any user forgets the username)
- Weblinks: Designed to display web link categories, web links in a category, and submit a web link
- Wrapper: Designed to display a layout that displays an external web site inside the page of your web site
Let’s start with the first option: Articles.
Source: Harwani B M (2015), Foundations of Joomla!, Apress; 2nd ed edition