Side navigation in Site Assist

In Site Assist (not pro) I'd like to put a link to an exisiting page on all my pages (except index) using the same link names. Site Assist won't let me use the same name for the link.

In the tree structure of SiteAssist pages will be generated based on the names that you give and their location in relation to the other pages. The links in the menu are handled by the SiteAssist wizard.

If you are wanting to put the link on the content pages all the same then you could add it into the template. If you are trying to put in name anchors or you are trying to add the links into the site in a different way please let us know and include some more detail so we can help you get it worked out.

I have a horizontal menu with 9 items. The second tab (after Home tab) has in the vertical menu among other items, Contact Us and Become A Member. I would like these 2 tabs to show up in all the other page's vertical menus but it won't let me use the same name.

How can I do this?

If you have the contact us and become a member pages in the site you should be able to link to them without issue. What is the specific error that you are getting? I'm having trouble understanding exactly where and when this is occurring for you and the exact steps you are taking that are giving you this result. There should not be anything that limits what pages you can link to. If you are making these changes in the tree control area of SiteAssist then you will only be able to make a page with a particular name occur once in the site. This page of the wizard is not for crafting links, it is the control of the sites pages and there relationship to one another. If you have any screen shots this might also help so that I can understand a little better what you are experiencing and why.

That's what I'm trying to do - add those 2 items to the tree control so that these two items show up with the same name under each main heading.

I gather from your comment that this can't be done.

No, it won't let you do that. Adding items from that interface doesn't just add links to the menu, you are telling it to create new pages, and the name that you give to those new pages is used as the filename, which must be unique.

I am guessing that you don't want two new pages (contact, become a member) for each section, but just want menu items that point to those two pages that you already have.

That can't be done from inside the SiteAssist GUI, but can easily be added (I think) by using CSSMenuWriter.

If you have MenuWriter, you should open your template (in the Templates folder) click on the small javascript icon beside the menu, and then click the 'edit contents' link in the properties inspector.

If the small javascript icon isn't showing on your page, then go to Dreamweaver Menu > Edit > Preferences > Invisible Elements > and make sure that the 'scripts' checkbox is ticked.

Thanks Neilo - you've understood the problem and helped.

I don't have CSS Menu Writer as I've been making DHTML menus up until now. Maybe I'll have to have a look at it.

Cheers frank,

You can still add the links manually, if you are careful (you would back-up your page first though).

Supposing you wanted to put the 'contact us' and Become a Member' links in the 'drop-down' items that appear when you hover over a top-level menu item (say, for this example 'Development') then you would copy the two lines you already have from the menu code in your template file, and paste them into the level-1 list under the 'Development ' (parent) item. The level-1 list would then look like this (in my scenario). The actual paths of the inserted and existing items would be whatever they are in your own template page.

<li class="parent"><a href="development.html">Development</a>
        <ul class="level-1">
          <li><a href="development/Development2.html">Development 2</a></li>
          <li><a href="development/Development3.html">Development 3</a></li>
          <li><a href="development/Development4.html">Development 4</a></li>
          <li><a href="development/Development5.html">Development 5</a></li>
          <li><a href="contactus.html">Contact Us</a></li>
          <li><a href="becomeamember.html">Become A Member</a></li>
        </ul>

You could paste the lines into the level-1 code of whichever parent menu items you need to. If you make the changes in your template page, when you save it it should ask you if you want to update all the pages based on that template.

Thanks - I'll play around with it.