Navigation design - reduce hardcoding

HI,

I have a standard design with horizontal navigation with drop down menus and 1 common template.

From one of the menu options I have a 'client restricted area' and once the client has logged on then the user gets access to a technical menu. This has slightly different template so I can restrict at technical menu and sub levels (by restricing to show navigation for my 'technical page' and lower levele pages.

The problem I have is that within my 'technical area' I have approx 10 menu levels. Within each of these I have 2 or 3 sub menu options. I want the user to be able to pick the top level technical menu option or any of the sub options and this to move to a 'left sidebar' page / template. This in principal works fine but when the page displays it shows my 2 or 3 sub menu options but when I select one of these I loose my left sidebar menu options for the other sub menu items.

I hope you can understand this waffle.

I have seen in the 'university education' example that they 'hard code' each of the menu / sub menu options to show all sub menus under a particular page but I don't want to hard codeso many pages - any suggestions welcomed?

Thanks

Steve

Hello Steve,

I am not aware of your current setup on the left sidebar, but I think you display all submenu pages with a tree navigation option as it allows you to display all pages under a currently opened page( this is the new option available for Sitefinity SP2 v.1501). If you want to display all the pages with all subpages and you current selection of expanded collapsed nodes to be persisted while you navigate trough other pages you will have to create a custom navigation that will save the changes of expanded or collapsed nodes trough different pages you navigate to. I have attached a sample script that does the persisting and you can configure it to suit your needs using :

Stanislav,

Thanks for your response. In principal I understand what you are saying. The problem I have is that I am not an ASP programmer, in sitefinity terms I am a novice designer. Could you please explain either through screenshots or video how I can create the required custom nivation and then apply the script in my pages to control if this displays.

Many thanks

Steve

Hello Steve,

I have attached a video and the control I created so you can view it and use in your project. You can customize the control as you like to suit your design needs. Also you can refer to the documentation on how to create user controls.

Write back if you need further assistance. I will be happy to help you.

Kind regards,
Stanislav Velikov
the Telerik team