CSS Menu Writer 1.0.4 links don not work

This has probably been covered before, but here goes:

I have linked all of my links in the nav bar to go to separate pages inside the folder locally. For example, my index.html page is located in C:\Business\drBible\index.html

Menu writer adds a / in front which makes the Home page points to /index.html.


When I tried to preview the pages -- It previewed ONLY on the current page. When "Home" was clicked or other Nav Button were clicked it lost the preview and gave an error massage indicating that the page does not exist. The page exits, I know because I see it there. The links were made to the pages by clicking the "Folder" inside the CSS Menu Writer and then selecting the appropriate page to link to.

CSS Menu Writer is 1.0.4

This occured on both DW 8.0.2 and DW CS4 and I am running Vista OS on My Laptop.

This is what I found out:

When the menu button is clicked -- it seems to be looking for the pages on the C:\ instead of the full path where the pages are located. This is why it gives the error messa "can not find 'File:///C:/doctorBible.html'" This leads me to believe that it is looking for the page in the wrong path. The correct path is: C:\Business\drBible\index.html

I think that there is a bug in this Menu Writer. This is the reason why. When I went to the code: I changed
<a href="/doctorBible.html">Doctor's Profile</a> to <a href="./doctorBible.html">Doctor's Profile</a> and it worked. I could make it work correctly from the code, but doing it like that will defeat the purpose of buying Menu Writer.

I will like to know if others have had similar issues?


Many thanks,

Michael

The problem is that you are previewing the page from the file system rather than through a web server.


Menu writer creates site relative links, in other words preceded with a slash. This is so the same menu can be used on multiple pages in your site with out having to make changes to accommodate for different paths.

When previewing the page from a web server, the forward slash tells the web server to go to the root of the domain, then look for the path in the link.


You are previewing from the file system however.In this case, the forward tells the browser to look for the path at the root of the drive you are on.

If you upload your pages to your host, the links should function properly.

Jason:

I will test out your theory sometimes tonight. For now I had to edit the codes so I can get it to work in time for my customer to preview it on my "viewing server".

<ul class="level-0" id="cssmw">
<li><span><a href="./index.html">Home</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./doctorBible.html">Doctor's Profile</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./practice.html">Our Practice</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./hours.html">Office Hours</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./services.html">Services</a></span>
<ul class="level-1">
<li><span><a href="./oralhealth.html">Oral Health</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./dentalarticles.html">Dental Articles</a></span></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><span><a href="./appointment.html">Appointment</a></span></li>
<li><span><a href="./contactus.html">Contact</a></span></li>
</ul>

drbible080209.homestead.com/



The above link is with the modifications that I made to the codes and all the links are working like I expect them to.

What you have said on your reply is that I will not be able to "test preview" my sites before uploading it to the hosting server. This is does not make any sense. I should be able to preview through the "File Systems" too -- without the need to always do the preview through a webserver.



Many thanks,

Michael

The menus created by Menu Writer use Site Relitive links so that the menu can be on pages through out your site without having to re calculate the relitive paths.

Site relative links cannot be reviewed from the file system. They can only be previewed through a webserver.

You can install a web server on your local computer to allow you to preview the site locally before uploading to the remote host.


Mac OSX ships with Apache and Windows Vista ships with IIS for this purpose.

Originally Said By: Jason Byrnes

  The problem is that you are previewing the page from the file system rather than through a web server.


Menu writer creates site relative links, in other words preceded with a slash. This is so the same menu can be used on multiple pages in your site with out having to make changes to accommodate for different paths.

When previewing the page from a web server, the forward slash tells the web server to go to the root of the domain, then look for the path in the link.


You are previewing from the file system however.In this case, the forward tells the browser to look for the path at the root of the drive you are on.

If you upload your pages to your host, the links should function properly.  

I have now tested your theory above -- It still did not work.

If you click on the "Home" link at the site indicated below, you will see that it did not load the the page.

index.php

What is true is, it should reload itself when "Home" is clicked instead it seem to be looking for "Home" in index.php


It worked without any problem on my test server\localhost. It loaded quite well using the localhost path shown below.

index.php


Q: Why did it fail when the site was tested on a production server? {by this I mean when it was uploaded to my hosting server. It worked fine on my localhost, but it failed on the hosting server}


Many thanks,

Michael

Please, I need some answer\update. I need to have this Menu writer work. I can make this thing work on my own; if I did, then what is the purpose of buying this software?

The purpose at least to me: is to make things faster. But now I am wasting a lot of time on something that is relatively simple as "nav" buttons\links.


Thanks in advance,

Michael

In the CSSMenuWriter/Menu.php file, what is the $WA_remoteRoot variable set to?

it sounds like it is seet as:
$WA_remoteRoot = "/user-registration_files/";

try changing it to:
$WA_remoteRoot = "";

Actually what obtained is: $WA_remoteRoot = "/";

Then I changed it in line with your suggestion to $WA_remoteRoot = "";


The links seem to all be working now.

Q1: Is this a bug or what?

There is a bug that can cause the Local root setting to be used in place of the remote root setting, it should be fixed in the next menu writer update.

Basicly in the menu.php file, line 6 is:

if (strpos($WA_curURL,strtolower($WA_localRoot)) == 0 && (strlen($WA_localRoot) >= strlen($WA_remoteRoot) || strpos($WA_curURL,strtolower($WA_localRoot)) === 0)) {

it should be:

if (strpos($WA_curURL,strtolower($WA_localRoot)) === 0 && (strlen($WA_localRoot) >= strlen($WA_remoteRoot) || strpos($WA_curURL,strtolower($WA_localRoot)) === 0)) {