Adding Articles Automatically to Menu

[lamis]

Well I dont know if I'm still newbie or not, however, I'm tired of seeing people adding articles and having to add them manually to the menu.
is there a way to assign sections articles to specific menu automaticlly? any help would be appreciated

[dextercowley]

Hi. Have you thought about using a Section List or Category List layout? It's not technically a menu, but it does what you want, which is to automatically add articles without having to modify menus. Another option to consider might be the free extension swMenuMaker, which at least makes it easy to add lots of menu items at one time. Hope this helps. Mark

[rjo]

Hello,
I use the latestnews module. The module generates a list of articles and it is pretty easy to display this list like a real menu.

Unfortunately the latest news module does not recognize which article is currently displayed and therefore does not know whether a list item is active.

Are there any workarounds for this?

(It could be done with some Javascript: Once the page is loaded, check the URL and then add the "active" attribute to the corresponding list item, but perhaps someone has already resolved the issue somewhat deeper in the system.)

[dextercowley]

Hi. Have you played with the Related Items module? This is very cool because it is based on keywords, so you are not tied to a section/category hierarchy (although you could just use the section and categories as the keywords if you wanted). You might give that a look. Hope this helps. Mark

[rjo]

Here is a followup:
Finally I created an template overwrite for mod_latestnews. This is the code:

<?php // @version $Id: default.php 9718 2007-12-20 22:35:36Z eddieajau $
defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access');
//rjo 2008.07.15, rewrite to identify which article is active.
if (count($list)){
$uri = JFactory::getURI()->toString();
echo '<ul class="latestnews'.$params->get('pageclass_sfx').'">';
foreach ($list as $item){
if(strpos($uri, $item->link) === false)
$act = '';
else
$act = ' active';
echo '<li class="latestnews'.$params->get('pageclass_sfx').$act.'">';
echo ' <a href="'.$item->link.'">'.$item->text.'</a></li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
}
?>
Hope that helps

Hello,
I use the latestnews module. The module generates a list of articles and it is pretty easy to display this list like a real menu.

Unfortunately the latest news module does not recognize which article is currently displayed and therefore does not know whether a list item is active.

Are there any workarounds for this?

(It could be done with some Javascript: Once the page is loaded, check the URL and then add the "active" attribute to the corresponding list item, but perhaps someone has already resolved the issue somewhat deeper in the system.)

[dextercowley]

Hi Rjo. That is very cool and a great tip! Would you be willing to make a post in the Tips and Techniques forum with this? Perhaps with an example screenshot of what it looks like in use? I think other people would like to use this. Thanks. Mark

[rjo]

Thanks Mark,
I just posted it on the T&T section (http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=236&t=309696) No screenshot though ;-) (the website design is not approved yet.)
And on the new documentation wiki too (http://docs.joomla.org/Menu_Items_Autom ... w_Articles)
have a good day

Hi Rjo. That is very cool and a great tip! Would you be willing to make a post in the Tips and Techniques forum with this? Perhaps with an example screenshot of what it looks like in use? I think other people would like to use this. Thanks. Mark

[orware]

I don't know if my module does exactly what you've been talking about here, but I was under the same impression that it sort of sucked that I had to create menu items for new articles to show up and I wanted to put something together that was more automatic, so I created my ArtCats module, which you can read a bit more about at the two links below.

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=295262
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=231&t=292997

Now the way the module works is you create your menu items to either sections or categories and the module will dynamically change its list of categories depending on the section you are visiting or it will change its list of articles depending on the category you are visiting (I've attached some screenshots showing the display).

Active Menu Highlighting currently isn't working, but that's also because I haven't the feature yet, which would be simple enough.

If you'd like to check it out and let me know if it's sort of what you were looking for I'd be glad to hear back :-).

[brighton36]

I've been dealing with this problem myself, and decided to do something about it. I created a Joomla Plugin to basically do what you'd expect. Take a look:
http://www.derosetechnologies.com/commu ... menu-magic

It works a lot like AutoCat, except it integrates with the menu system - rather than side-stepping it entirely. I submitted the plugin to the JED repository - but it seems to be taking a little while to get approved. Perhaps leave a rating for it if you end up using it?

[millend]

I've been dealing with this problem myself, and decided to do something about it. I created a Joomla Plugin to basically do what you'd expect. Take a look:
http://www.derosetechnologies.com/commu ... menu-magic

It works a lot like AutoCat, except it integrates with the menu system - rather than side-stepping it entirely. I submitted the plugin to the JED repository - but it seems to be taking a little while to get approved. Perhaps leave a rating for it if you end up using it?

Kudos! Wondrefuuuuul!!! Thank you... This just made my day - I already had pictured myself adding articles AND then menu items for a whole day, this saved me half the time! TY.

[TatsujinUK]

I'm having problems with this and haven't been able to find any comprehensive step-by-step instructions on the site or had a reply from the author. As far as I can tell I've got it set up the way it should be, but nothing happens on the frontend.

Is anyone who has got this working successfully able to throw some tips out to us on how to set this up step-by-step.

Cheers

Chris

[millend]

I'm having problems with this and haven't been able to find any comprehensive step-by-step instructions on the site or had a reply from the author. As far as I can tell I've got it set up the way it should be, but nothing happens on the frontend.

Is anyone who has got this working successfully able to throw some tips out to us on how to set this up step-by-step.

Only thing I followed, was the main installation tutorial and it worked right out of the box!

Few reminders;
*Have you enabled both plugins?
*Do you have article category & menu name exactly the same?
*Don't change any of the default values inside the plugin (at first anyway)

That's all I did basically and it worked perfectly!

[TatsujinUK]

Yup, done all that . . . nothing happens

[mmponline]

I get this to work on adding a new item to the corect Category and Section.
When I, however, move it to a new section, it's not removed. (Both plugins are installed and published). When I change an existing Article's Category / Section, it's not adding it as well. Only new articles.
What am I missing?

[millend]

I get this to work on adding a new item to the corect Category and Section.
When I, however, move it to a new section, it's not removed. (Both plugins are installed and published). When I change an existing Article's Category / Section, it's not adding it as well. Only new articles.
What am I missing?

I'am guessing it's not meant to do that - it's meant for just new articles/menu links and if you move stuff around, it does not recognize it...! Just a guess tho, haven't tried moving myself.

[mmponline]

On the site is the following: (I quote)
"Subsequent updates to content (publish status, trash status, category assignment changes) are automatically reflected as you'd expect in the site menus. When an article is deleted, so is its corresponding menu item."

Delete works, but not moving or assigning exsisting articles. Also updating the menu title is not changed when changing the article's name and/or alias.

[desiredbard]

I am using a nested dropdown menu
If I add a section to this menu i would like it to automatically sub itemise the cathegories and articles instead of having to do this manually

[kailey_joomla]

I think the Automatic Menu Magic is great for doing this but does anyone know if there is something similar to this for automatically creating sub menus?

[MarioFlying]

There is! I needed something like this, too. But it's hard to find almost no reference on the entire Internet (like fifty downloads on the website, yuk).
It's an "Automatic Menu Magic" mod, I use it and it works!
Here it is:

Automatic Sub Menu Magic
http://www.bincom.net/works/extensions/ ... gic-bincom

Just be sure to set "all" in the "Carry out on Menu with name" voice of the plugin preferences page.
You create an article in "my pet" and you have a new menu in your "my pet" menu, whatever your original main menu name is.
Great!

[DC_Navan]

There is! I needed something like this, too. But it's hard to find almost no reference on the entire Internet (like fifty downloads on the website, yuk).
It's an "Automatic Menu Magic" mod, I use it and it works!
Here it is:

Automatic Sub Menu Magic
http://www.bincom.net/works/extensions/ ... gic-bincom

Just be sure to set "all" in the "Carry out on Menu with name" voice of the plugin preferences page.
You create an article in "my pet" and you have a new menu in your "my pet" menu, whatever your original main menu name is.
Great!

Hi MarioFlying!

It's only on 73 downloads now!

Do you know if that will work with Joomla 1.6?

Cheers!

[ms_buggy]

The automenu magic -plugin sure does not work with joomla 1.7, just tested it. error 500 after enabling the plugin duo.

But I'm also curiously looking for solution to automatically create menu items, for new articles in a certain category. I thought this would have created to joomla core itself but it seems not.

Any easy solutions for this? Or is the only way use latest news modules, etc?
Thanks in advance!

[Greyhame]

The automenu magic -plugin sure does not work with joomla 1.7, just tested it. error 500 after enabling the plugin duo.

But I'm also curiously looking for solution to automatically create menu items, for new articles in a certain category. I thought this would have created to joomla core itself but it seems not.

Any easy solutions for this? Or is the only way use latest news modules, etc?
Thanks in advance!

I had this same problem with 1.7

The way I solved it was to use the latest news module (for certain categories) then used the Advanced Module Manager to assign this module to pages that included articles within certain categories.

This is a great extension which allows you to assign modules to any page of your website, without needing to assign them to menu items.

I now have a menu item that automatically updates when I add an article, and the menu only shows up on the pages that I have chosen.

[ms_buggy]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one in trouble with this feature. Not sure if I understood the use of advaced module manager, because I was happy to see that in 1.7 you can assign module "to all except". I have also written php if-clauses to assign modules based on menu-aliases.
Anyway the automatic manu creation would be nice feature to have on joomla 1.7 core. I think it would help alot of work for the users who mostly update content, and don't work with joomla continuously. But this conversation is under 1.5 so..

[Au79]

Update for November 2012:

The Automatic Menu Magic plugin by DeRoseTechnologies works perfectly in Joomla 1.5.

Just remember to create a menu with the same name as the category of the article. In my case I just renamed "Main Menu" to "Pages". Now every new article under the category of Pages has a menu item created automatically.

Kudos and many thanks to the developers!

[trogladyte]

I too faced this dilemma today. I found this extension and it works a treat.

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... tors/20057