Adding pages to your site menu with powerCMS Templates

Please disregard his post, I have had a helpful response on another thread Thank you.
I'm new to the Webassist stuff-I have CSS Menu Writer, Site Sculptor and CSS Sculptor. I want to include a horizontal navigation bar that my clients can edit via the built in Power CMS features that come with the Site Sculptor-but can't get it to happen. When I upload to testing server only the text areas like 'content' and 'sidebar' are editable. Is this possible or do I need to go back to Joomla...hope not! The Webassist stuff is so much easier for clients. My suspicion is that PowerCMS does not create new pages so looks like this would mean all bets are off. Can anyone help?

You may be able to use template pages in site sculptor to achieve the result you are looking for.

You could add the editable region to the template that is created in the /Templates/ folder to add the side navigation area.

Then use menu writer to create the menu you want to add. I believe you can only add tables to loop on in the menu writer wizard, so you will have to update the recordset on the menu include after it is created. So you can either add it entirely later, or use the ps3_contents table where you want the links to be updated through powerCMS. That will set up a recordset with the correct columns you will use and the correct repeated regions, so that might be the best bet to get started.

Then you will open the menu.php page created update the created recordset (or create a recordset to use with a repeated region if you are doing it manually).

The new SQL statement will look something like:

SELECT C2.ContentGroup, C2.ContentPageSetOrder FROM ps3_contents AS C1 LEFT OUTER JOIN ps3_contents AS C2 ON C2.ContentPagesetParentID = C1.ContentID WHERE C1.ContentGroup = '[YourCMSContentName]' AND C2.ContentPageSetOrder IS NOT NULL GROUP BY C2.ContentPageSetOrder ORDER BY C2.ContentPageSetOrder DESC

That will get you all of the template derived pages in a recordset that you can then use to create the menu links like:

<a href="YourTemplatePage.php?[YourCMSContentName]=<?php echo $row_YourRecordsetName['ContentPageSetOrder']; ?>">

That should be used with the correct opening path to get to the page... it will already be in the repeated region if you use the table looping feature when creating the menu, or you add one now.

(In sitesculptor)

So I can take the CSS Menu Sculptor and put it in an editable region on the templates/sitesculptor_template.dwt.php

Then open menu.php and do what?

What do I do with te SQL statement?

Will this work to use the CMS admin to add menu links to the main navigation bar?

This is a note on hand editing for php developers. If you don't understand SQL and Recordsets you probably won't be successful.

You use the SQL statement to create a recordset and then use that recordset to update your menu.

This post has been deleted.

I'm still struggling in this topic... I've had some similarly technical answers on this which I genuinely do appreciate, but I also have to say that the whole point of a site builder package is that its for people like me who don't 'speak' sql or php etc. All I want to do is enable clients to log in to the Powercms admin area, create a page (no problem-tell it its a template when you set the site up), edit the page, (again, no problem) and then... here's the tricky bit-create a menu item to link it to.

In "help" it says : "Once you have updated the content, click the Create Link option to see how you can create a link to this new page." This had led me to believe that there was a facility to link to a menu item. However, all I can find is the 'insert/edit link" button in the WYSIWYG editor. This will insert an inline hyperlink-not a menu item. So a link can be inserted (the dialogue box brought up by the insert link button insists there are no pages or files to link to, so I can't even do it that way, but that's another issue). I cannot figure out how to add an area into the template using SiteSculptor that will be a menu that shows up in the CMS admin area-it looks like I need some pretty advanced programming knowledge in Sql etc to do this-which is a shame as something like SiteSculptor is aimed at people like me who don't have these skills.

So my conclusion is that Sitesculptor, good as it is at what it does do, doesn't let you/enable you to include an option for clients to add a menu item after the wizard has run its course at the start. The designer has to do that. This means that a vital component of every site is entirely static and fixed-all menus are fixed at design stage and can't be edited by the client at all. I'm not suggesting it's Webassist's fault, but I do feel I spent $100 or so on something with a crucial shortcoming. If I have not missed something then i am very disappointed in a product that does what is does very well-but that entirely fails to do something essential for most users. I'd love to be wrong here. Am I?

As I have confimed on another thread, you are correct...

We will definitely look into making that easier in the next version. We will also be integrating something like this into the next version of powerstore for a functional example of how to do it before then.

I am also very disappointed in PowerCMS. You say that you can build a site and hand it over to the client but they have no way to add new pages and update the menu without my intervention. I feel that I have wasted money that I really didn't have at the time trying to get a job done to make some quick money.

hey there

what is it that you're disappointed in?

Jamie

Since this thread was started, we have created a tutorial on our you tube channel for creating a template page to allow new pages to be created, and showing a dynamic listing of each page that is created from the template.


The Text version of the tutorial is located here:
powercms_create_pages_from_templates.php

there is also a link to the video on that page.