Grouping custom selection of pages in default Navigation Wid

I'm trying to use the basic, default navigation widget straight out of the box for a super simple menu, but I can't figure out how to make it behave like I need.

My site has page structure with 2 top level pages, "Help" and "Information", each having 3-4 sub pages.  If I drop in a new navigation widget, by default it has "Top-level Pages" selected and shows 2 items in the menu: Help and Information, each with an arrow for flyouts with the sub pages.

What I want is to be able to have 2 navigation widgets, each showing only 1 of those items with the same flyouts they have now.  This will allow me to do lots of neat things like have one at the top left and the other at the top right, or move them around the page.

It seems like I should be able drop in 2 navigation widgets, each set to "All pages under a particular page", but when I do that it no longer collapses the menus, even when telling it to include the parent.  I also tried a custom selection of pages, but again that flattens the entire thing regardless of any structures.  I need to be able to keep all of the structures, grouping, flyouts, but only show specific top level items instead of everything.

How can I get a subset of the top-level menu, but with all of the normal grouping/flyouts??

Thanks!

Hello Scott,

In order to achieve your needs you can increase the Level of abstraction by one additional level like here:
http://screencast.com/t/lgRyBOnYLL

In that case on both menus you can set All pages under particular page -> Group1 and Group2 respectively as shown here: http://screencast.com/t/xe4EZefEOsJ

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Svetoslav Manchev
Telerik

Thanks for the response!  Your solution would change all of the urls though right?  While I know we could redirect all of the old urls, that just causes extra slowness and confusion when we have a bunch of marketing materials and inbound links already existing.  It also makes all link checkers respond that the links are inaccurate and can confuse search engines.

Is there an option to do the same thing with either customizing the nav widget template or by extending the control in code so that we can leave the pages at the top level where they belong instead of adding a redundant extra one-to-one grouping tier?

Hi Scott,

In that case you can check that article, how to add the parent node in the navigation:
http://docs.sitefinity.com/display-the-parent-node-in-the-navigation-widget and implement your logic to move the child items under the parent node 
 - or -
you can use Feather Navigation widget, where this is available out-of-the-box. It is just needed to set the "ShowParentPage" under the Advanced menu of the Navigation widget to "true".
More about Feather module could be found here: http://docs.sitefinity.com/feather-get-started

Regards,
Svetoslav Manchev
Telerik

Is there any way to choose what pages you want to appear in the Feather Navigation widget? 

Hello Laura,

There is option for custom selection of pages in Feather and WebForms Navigation.

Alternatively you can select for example all pages under particular page, but exclude some of them by uncheck the "Show in navigation" of the respective page under: Actions > Title & Properties menu of the respective page

Regards,
Svetoslav Manchev
Telerik

Thank you Svetoslav.

That is what I thought but there must be something wrong with our Feather Navigation widget then because when I hit edit it goes right to the advanced view.

Regards,
Laura

Hello Laura,

Do you have any browser error/s (F12 > Console tab) when open the 'Edit' menu of the Navigation widget or do you have "Simple" button at the bottom, is it clickable? 

Regards,
Svetoslav Manchev
Telerik

Hi Svetoslav,

Thank you very much for you prompt reply.  We have figure out the problem and it is working correctly now.