Chapter 8: Working with the Menu System
IN THIS CHAPTER
Understanding how menus work in Joomla!
Introducing the Menu Manager and the Menu Item Manager
Creating and managing menus
Creating and managing menu items
Creating multi-tiered menu structures
Controlling access to menus and menu items
Menus are used to create the principal navigation links on the pages of your website. The way you structure access to your content through the use of menus has a tremendous effect on the usability of your site and how your site visitors perceive the site. A hard-to-use menu structure makes a hard-to-use site.
Joomla! provides a number of tools for creating and controlling menus. There are three constituent parts to the Joomla! menu system: menu items are the links the users see on the site; these menu items are grouped together into containers called menus; menus are displayed on the page through the use of menu modules. Mastering the menu system means gaining an awareness of how to create and manage these three parts.
In this chapter, I go through the creation and management of menus and menu items and I explain the role played by menu modules.
Introducing the Menu Manager
The Menu Manager is a standard Joomla! component included with the default system. You use the Menu Manager to create and manage all the menus on your site. The Menu Manager displays not only a list of the menus in the system but also information about the contents of the menus, including the number of items on each menu, ...
