Generate menu

In RAMUI WEBBLOG script version - 3 and above webmaster has the option to generate menu either statically or dynamically. In static menu system predefined HTML code are stored in database and displayed on WebPages. On the other hand dynamic menu codes are generated at run time and are displayed.

Static menu

To accept static menu option, under settings menu from admin panel uncheck the option "Generate menu on the fly" as shown in figure below.

Now from the admin panel click on the link "Menu". A menu generator screen will appear.
[View image]

Dynamic menu script

To generate menu dynamically webmaster has to select the option "Generate menu on the fly" given in the website settings menu. Now select the type of menu required from the drop-down list as shown in picture. There are four types of menu available for dynamic menu script. They are,

  1. Simple menu;
  2. JavaScript menu;
  3. Ajax menu and
  4. Category menu.

Simple menu: Simple menu are simple list menu divided by the categories of the posts. They are formed by simple HTML code so independent to the web browsers and their versions. They are very much user friendly and search engine friendly since all post links are available from every WebPages. Simple menu are suitable for websites less than 80 pages.

JavaScript menu: Inbuilt JavaScript menu available in Ramui webblog script is DHTML list menu formed by CSS and a few lines of JavaScript code. Here menu is divided into categories and sub categories, so very much user friendly. Search engines can also easily detect the links of the menu. This menu script is better suited for larger websites of around 200 pages.

Ajax menu: In Ajax menu only page categories are listed in menu items and only the links of current category is expanded to list the webpage links of that category. When a category is clicked by a viewer an Ajax request is sent to the server to list the webpage links of that category. This type of menu is not friendly to all the search engines. Ajax menu is very useful for websites having more than 500 pages.

Category menu: This is a newly defined menu system available from version-4 and above of Ramui webblog script. SEO experts say that maximum number of links in a webpage should be limited to sixty (including inbound links) for best indexing of search engines. Category menu is analogies to Ajax menu, but the only deference is that the category links are the links of index page of the respective categories. If you do not create an index page under this category then an auto generated index page will be displayed listing all the posts along with their description. So this menu script provides two greate advantages, it uses simple HTML code and hence search engine friendly, and it generates few more page links which is good for SEO.

Advantages and disadvantages of static and dynamic menu

Static menu system has the following advantages over dynamic menu.

  1. Webmaster can add custom links with the menu system. This feature is especially important for a new website where menu items are very few.
  2. It loaded faster than dynamic menu.

Disadvantages of static menu over dynamic menu system are,

  1. Every time a post is generated or deleted or blocked webmaster has to update the menu code.
  2. Menu links will be either with or without www suffix.

Page specific custom menu

Ramui webblog script has an option to generate page specific custom menu. To add a custom menu for a particular webpage, say "about.html" page create an addon page of name 'munu_about'. Now irrespective to your preferred menu setting that menu page will appear only for your about.html page.

Adding menu to your template

Vertical menu usually appears at the left or right sidebar of a webpage. You can add menu in your template file by using the following code within php tag.

Code | Download
//Add menu.
echo fw_db->menu($fw_page_array['pagename']);