New Module: Structure - Uses entries to create a page hierarchy for static and listing pages

Well.. I understand. Thanks for the explanation Travis.

@gary

I usually display the childelements of a page if there is no content or you could redirect to the first child element if there is no content, but that would require some custom code.

I’ve build a small plugin that retrieves the uri of a page, i use this in combination with tiny MCE and the {exp:allow_eecode} plugin to create dynamic url’s.

Our solution was to add a “Redirect” field to our Structure weblog. At the top of our templates we check to see if there’s a value there, if there is, we embed a simple 301 redirect template and pass it the value of the Redirect field, forego the rest of the template.

Nice one. Thanks. Yes, that will certainly do the trick. At least I now know that I’m not missing some functionality that’s available in Structure itself.

It would be nice if Structure had the additional ability to create a ‘link’ item rather than a physical page within the document structure. This would allow the author to create a link to any other internal page within Structure, or even an external website. Thinking about it, this is (more or less) how the menu functionality works in Joomla (dirty word!).

Don’t know how easy this would be? Is this outside of the scope of Structure? Personally, I think it would be a killer feature 😊

Thanks again for your help 😊

Gary

Hi, Great idea 😊

But could someone explain URl structure? I created Top level menu and now, links are like: /-2 /-3 /-4

Is this default Url configuration? Or am I missing something? because i dont want to have Url’s like that, without words in Url

Also im trying to add css to ul but nothing happens?! This is the code that I’m using:

{exp:structure:nav_main css_id="navigation" css_class="topnav" current_class="current"}

But only current class is applied?

<ul id="nav" >
<li class="nav_home current"><a href="/index.php/">Home</a></li>
<li class="nav_-9"><a href="/index.php/-9/">Produkt</a></li>
<li class="nav_-2"><a href="/index.php/-2/">Servis</a></li>
<li class="nav_-8"><a href="/index.php/-8/">Support</a></li>
<li class="nav_-4"><a href="/index.php-4/">Kunden</a></li>
<li class="nav_-5"><a href="/index.php-5/">Über uns</a></li>
<li class="nav_-6 last"><a href="/index.php-6/">Kaufe</a></li>
</ul>

Thanks in advance

@dealsoft

The docs are wrong on this. To change the CSS on exp:structure:nav_main use nav_id and nav_css.

Also, it looks like the Structure URI you’ve entered is something like “-9”. I find it works best to make the Structure URL match the title URL, so they’d be something like: home, produkt, servis, support, kunden, uber-uns, kaufe.

@dealsoft The docs are wrong on this. To change the CSS on exp:structure:nav_main use nav_id and nav_css. Also, it looks like the Structure URI you’ve entered is something like “-9”. I find it works best to make the Structure URL match the title URL, so they’d be something like: home, produkt, servis, support, kunden, uber-uns, kaufe.

I already changed names for classes and id’s :(

I followed some tutorial where, for all top level menu’s, he explained to enter “/” and that’s why I have URL like -2, -3 Changed to match title URL’s so it works now… 😊

Thanks for tips 😊

Our solution was to add a “Redirect” field to our Structure weblog. At the top of our templates we check to see if there’s a value there, if there is, we embed a simple 301 redirect template and pass it the value of the Redirect field, forego the rest of the template.

Thanks openmotive - This is working perfectly. FYI, I’m using the Redirect 301 Plugin within my template to perform the redirect. Nice, simple plugin. My template looks like this :

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="pages" limit="1" disable="member_data|trackbacks|comments|pagination"}
{exp:redirect301 url="{page_redirect}"}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

{page_redirect} being the name of my custom field.

@Ambition + @openmotive: This is something I’ve kicked around quite a bit and have been mulling over the best way to integrate it so it’s not confusing for authors. I’m not sure if this will be a next version feature, but it’s definitely on my list for the reasons you mentioned. Top level pages defaulting to the first child and linking elsewhere or to files have been mentioned a few times. The hard part is making these easy to implement. I’d actually love to hear both your thoughts - if you have time can you email me how you would see both of those scenarios working within Structure? It helps to get outside ideas from people who may look at the problem in a different way. Thanks for the feedback!

And that’s a sick fix for the redirect guys - nice work!

I use the redirect technique too, and it works great. With that, I don’t feel a need to make Structure more complex. I would like to see Structure read a title field from the destination document, so we could put more info into hover or a link description.

Hi Travis,

Thanks for the feedback. Awesome Extension BTW and I’d be happy to pay for a license to ensure that development continues 😊

These are just very, very quick thoughts regarding link functionality. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience developing Extensions for EE (although I’m planning on starting when EE2 launches 😉 ) so I’ve no idea if any of this is possible. However, I always encourage my clients to give me a ‘perfect scenario’ regarding website functionality, and then I work backwards or forwards from there…so I thought this would be a good place to start 😊

I’ve attached 2 x JPEGS which give a very quick overview of how a link feature could work. Again, I have no idea if this is even possible, but I think something like this would keep Structure simple whilst adding some killer functionality to the extension. I envisage clicking on ‘add link’ triggers a jQuery popup. In the example here, I’m creating a link for ‘Our Approach’ thank will link through to ‘Technology and Innovation’.

So this post is here to provoke a discussion. What do you think? Is this (or something similar) even possible? Can anyone think of a better way of achieving this? Is this overcomplicating Structure? Thoughts very welcome 😊

Gary

Hey everyone,

Just ran into the double “here” class when you have the Overview enabled on sub-nav as well. Any idea when that bug might get squashed ? 😊

Just my 2 cents on Structure. The most important development would be for it to develop better menus, something like this:

<ul id="Main-nav" class="horz_menu">
    <li id="Main-nav-home" class="here" title="Home page"><a href="/home">Home</a></li>
    <li id="Main-nav-products" title="Swimming pool toys"><a href="/products">Products</a></li>
    <li id="Main-nav-supplies" class="last" title="Swimming pool supplies"><a href="/supplies">Supplies</a></li>
</ul>

A unique id for each item would allow me to use CSS to put icons next to them or transform them into buttons.

Being able to put the title into the LI would be a great option, but I’d also like to be able to put it after the link, like this:

<li id="Main-nav-supplies"><a href="/supplies">Supplies</a>: Swimming pool toys</li>

Some kind of parameter to Structure like title=”Go to {description}”, or after_link_text=”: {description}”. Structure would read the named field from the child page.

This would help usability and accessibility a lot.

I also wish the parameters for nav_main and nav_sub used the same names when they specify the same things, like css_id.

Thanks again for a great addition.

@ambition: LOVE the idea of the 301 redirect plugin! Makes the code much cleaner. Gonna implement that one right away.

Regarding whether or not structure should have a “linking” mechanism:

I personally think that if they go down the road of adding that feature, it opens up many more possibilities that people might need and request that would make things even more confusing. For instance, if my clients could link a “page” or nav item to another page, they’d quickly end up doing that in too many places in the site and risk confusing visitors as they jump around the the sections of the site when they didn’t need to.

I do like the mockups. Just not sure if that’s something I want to be easily done by my clients..whereas the extra redirect field is something that they tend to leave alone because they don’t always entirely understand it. If it isn’t a drop down, text entry, filemanager, or wysiwyg field, they tend to leave it alone.