Create expandable category nav menu

2 posts by 2 authors in: Forums > CMS Builder
Last Post: August 12, 2011   (RSS)

By coliva - August 12, 2011

Hi! I'm new to CMS Builder but have used your Article Manager in the past and loved it! I'm a designer with some baisc programming experience (not much PHP though) and was hoping you could guide me with some pointers on how to create an expandable category menu.

This would be a left column menu bar. The top-level categories would remain closed until the user rolled over them, at which point they would expand to show the subcategories.

Closed menu:

- Our Company
- Product Cat 1
- Product Cat 2
- Product Cat 3

Expanded menu:

Our Company
-- About Us
-- Contact

Product Cat 1
-- Brand A
-- Brand B
-- Brand C

Product Cat 2
-- Brand D
-- Brand F

etc...

I've created pages for the Product Category pages, which are a compilation of all the Brands list pages. I've also created a categoriesList page with this hierarchy.

Any help would be appreciated! Please let me know if you need to attach my files/code.

thanks -

Claudia

Re: [coliva] Create expandable category nav menu

By Jason - August 12, 2011

Hi Claudia,

If you've already created your categories and have a page where you're listing your categories, you've already done most of the work!

What you'll need now is a 3rd Party Script to style and operate your menu. CMS Builder itself doesn't create these menus, but there are a lot of free options out there. For example, here is a list I found of different jquery/css based menus:
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/36-eye-catching-jquery-navigation-menus/

All these scripts would come with example of how to create them. A good way to approach this is to try to use a menu script on a hardcoded list of categories. Once you've gotten that working properly, you can then try to integrate CMS Builder's code into it.

Hope this helps get you started.
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