The Menu option under "System Setup" / "Preferences" allows you to edit both the pull-down menu that appears across the top of the website as well as the menu that appears down the side panels.
When logged in there are other "quick links" to change the menu setup as shown below
When you edit the top or side menu, a screen similar to the one below will appear. The text associated with each pull-down menu title is specified here.
You can optionally embed simple HTML directives (as shown below) to center or highlight menu items. (advanced users should avoid entering colors or specifying fonts as embedded HTML, since colors and fonts are configured elsewhere in the system more efficiently and CSS styles are exposed for various menu button states). The space allocation for each title is intentionally limited - menu item descriptions should be short and concise.
Configuring the Top Row Pull Down Names
If you leave a menu item blank it will be "skipped" and will not appear in the menu, although it is good practise to structure your menus without skipping items. A graphical symbol to the left of the Configure Pulldown Menu button serves to indicate whether the menu items is visible to the public or whether access is restricted in some way.
If menu items are not appearing when you are logged out of the website, it is likely that the menu item has not been exposed to the public. Hiding a top-level pull-down item from the public makes all of the sub-menus invisible regardless of their permission settings.
Configuring the Pull Down Items under each Title
Select "Configure Pulldown Menu" to show all the Pull Down Menu items under each topic. For example, clicking beside the "System Features" title in our example above will result in the screen below appearing.
Up to fifteen sub-menu items may be associated with each pull-down title. Properties are controlled for each of these menu options by clicking on the "Action on Selection" button. A visual indication is provided reflecting whether menu options are visible to the public or whether content is restricted to particular member categories.
Some menu options may be configured to open a new window (or tab depending on your browser) when selected. If linking to another web-site, or loading a PDF document, sometimes opening the content in a new window is useful.
Defining an "Action on Selection"
The screen below shows how content or actions are associated with individual menu items. In the example below, when someone clicks on a "Board of Directors" menu button, we instruct the system to load a document or file in the document library. In this case a document in the "WEB PAGES" category called "Board of Directors"!
In this example we've indicated that this menu option is visible to all web-site visitors and that when selected, the document will appear in the current browser window. We could just as easily "uncheck" the Public box to make our Board of Directors button inaccessible to non-members.
Some additional important information about linking to each type of entity in NeatClubs.COM is provided below:
Linking to Documents or Files
Documents and Files are treated in a similar way by NeatClubs, however they are actually different things. Documents reflect web-page content (expressed in HTML) that is stored directly in the NeatClubs database. Files are entities that have been uploaded to the system (PDF documents, Excel spreadsheets, Videos etc.) While information about the file is stored in the database, the file itself is stored in an "uploads" directory on the server.
When you link to a document, NeatClubs will automatically invoke a small program that will extract a document from the database and render it's content in the display area.(called view_doc.php or view_doc_by_id.php).
Linking to a file results in different behaviour since depending on the file type the system will attempt to present it using a built-in viewer (an Adobe PDF viewer as an example) or simply provide a link directly to the uploaded content.
Linking to Event Descriptions
NeatClubs.COM supports a number of different event types. When you link to an event, you will be invited to proceed with some sort of an on-line registration activity. Whether you are asked to login or create a membership profile in the course of the registration will depend on how the event is configured. (anonymous events do not require a membership record to be created or be present for registration to occur). Normally events will be invoked by calling an event handler script (event.php) which will "run" the event for a particular event ID in accordance with the event specific policies previously setup by the administrator and stored in the database.
Some types of events such as Resource Reservation Events are handled specially by the system. Because resource reservation events require a user of the web-site to select an available resource at a particular date and time, the resource reservation schedule will be displayed as a first step in a registration process for this event type.
Linking to Photo Collections
When authorized users or administrators contribute photos NeatClubs.COM system, they are asked to associate the photo with a photo collection name. When linking to a photo collection, you are linking to a representation of all photos in a collection a user has permission to access (based on their member category).
As shown above, we can view the photos collections in a number of formats:
| • | Gallery views where we see the pictures as thumbnails |
| • | We can show users the detailed List View normally available only to the system administrator where functions such as Edit, Delete and Change Image Properties are not made available. |
| • | We can show a flash based scrolling filmstrip view which is an attractive way to display many photo galleries |
| • | We can also show a simple view showing one photo in the group after another in a large list formatted to show clearly on the screen (500 pixels wide) - this view should only be chosen if the photos in the group are large enough to make this practical. There is no point in showing photos that are only 200 pixels wide in a 500 pixel display or the images will just appear grainy. |