Left Column for Side Menu Links/ Nav Bar on every page

[Erwin]

I'm sure this has been posted here before, but since Boofo wanted to know how to put a left column menu on every page using a template mod, I thought I would post it here in case anyone else is interested too.

It's fairly simple - just adding some code to your "header" and "footer" templates using basic HTML.



In your "header" template -

ADD this code at the BOTTOM of the template:



<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="left" width="150">
<tr><td>

PUT YOUR MENU LINKS HERE.

</td></tr></table>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%">
<tr><td>




In your "footer" template -

ADD this code at the TOP of the template:



</td></tr></table>





There you have it - a left column side menu nav bar on every page! :)

[Mr_P]

works well - but thing is it makes a big gap at other side of your board as well

how can you have this side menu yet make board use up all the remaining space???????

Cheers for info in first place m8

[Erwin]

Just use the new "header" template code in the first post - I added width="100%" to the SECOND table in the "header" template which should make the main forum table fill up the whole page.

Feel free to adjust the width of the table for the side menu and the main forum table.

[Mr_P]

well done m8 works well just gotta suzz out now how to get the side menu from VBINDEX in there now as everytime i call it in it messes the main page up beyond belief

[NTLDR]

Well heres the template edit :) I'll get the file and integration edit done now ;)

[Bad Bunny]

This gets real funky when viewing a thread.
When posts extend past the menu, they extend all the way to the lefct. Is there any fix for this?

[dawn]

Sorry for this stupid question, BUT I cant fix it, I dont see where to add the width="100"

Also, how to make all the pages adjustable when I minimized the screen.

does anybody knows the values for:
- Main Table Width
- Content table Width?

[Tony G]

One of these were released at vBT too, but it had lots of pre-coded vB related links. ;)

Nice work Erwin! :D

[Dean C]

Check the template faq in my sig on details on how to do this a different way :)

Regards

- miSt

[dawn]

Thanks

one more thing, any idea of how to have 3 columns rather than 2 in all the forum pages.

I've found one hack but is not working in all the pages, the problem is when u go deep to the message itself, it's a mess.

Im using vb 2.3

thanks

[trackpads]

I did something like Erwin posted (he gave me the great idea. Instead of having the left menu on every page I just wanted it on my index and below my thumbnail includer from Photopost-

I added the header for the table in the FORUMHOME template and the footer as he instructed in the footer.

http://www.trackpads.com/forum

[GamerzWorld]

Im a n00b with this kind of thing. How do i add boxes. Whats the code ?

[Airs]

Hey trackapds would it be possible for you to release how to do that?.

[davidke]

on my site it doesnt work fine, why?? please help me, i can't find any mistake

[switch]

davidke, you have to replase the "PUT YOUR MENU LINKS HERE." with your own menu code.

switch

[MindTrix]

Yeah but if you look at his screenshot everythings shoved over to the right ;) and has gone off the screen

[drumsy]

Does anyone have the code to doing this on the right side of the page, instead of the left?

[gmarik]

Is there any way to take the links from the DB,
not a manual way to writing them down?!

[mcahill]

I have the same problem...the first two posts (those next to my nav bar) are hanging off the side of the page, with no scrollbar or anything.

It looks as though it's taking the 100% from the table width and making it 100% of the full page width, not the table cell.

It's cool, this is just what I need. When I can get it working without dumping the posts off the side of the page.

[MindTrix]

Ok, i installed this on my test board and got errors like everyone else did. So i did basically what Erwin said in one of his posts ;)

In the Header area at the top look for this code you added--

</td></tr></table>
<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%">
<tr><td>

It's right at the top. I changed the 100% too 80% and it sorted everything out perfectly. Baring in mind i have my Main Table and Content Table width set to 85%.

Basically change that % on the code until you find one that works for you

[mcahill]

but it leaves the main forum display quite narrow. I'll play with the settings, but I didn't like the results I was getting the other day.

Probably will just hold off until 3.0 rc1

[Blindchild02]

this doesnt work for me. :|

[NSeXcellent]

Guys, check out my sites.... http://www.sportsnimports.com or http://www.louisianaclubscene.com/ .... I have had the left tables for over a year on either site now. Here's a small tutorial on what I did, which may or may not help you.

Basically, the header is EVERYTHING that is generated BEFORE the actual forum tables are built from the scripting. All i did was opened up a new file in Microsoft FrontPage, then 'Built' if you will, the idea that I had for my layout (See screenshot). The left column on my bottom table is where all my links/banners are located. The width of this column is set to 145px or something like that. I put a divider column 10px wide after the left column. The width of the right column is set to 100%, meaning every pixel left over on the users screen. This prevents scroll bars in most cases. Here's the trick to making this work for your header/footer. I started in the top left corner of the right table and typed the word "FORUM" here. In other words, the FIRST thing that is generated in that portion of the table, is the word "FORUM" (See screen shot). From there, I inserted my custom Logo, tables, fonts, borders, colors, etc in both the top table and the bottom left table. Now, this is the easy part. View the source of what you've created. I deleted all the BS metatags that were inserted by FrontPage. I started right after the </head> tag, and copied EVERYTHING all the way up to the LAST character before the word "FORUM". Then I pasted that entire selection into my Header template. I then started with the first character AFTER the word FORUM, and copied EVERYTHING to the end of the page there into my Footer Template. Thats it! The scripting inserts all the forum information AFTER the header and BEFORE the footer. What you've done was told it to STICK all that right where the word FORUM was placed in the table. Make sense? Here is a screenshot of what mine looked like just before I cut and pasted it all into my script. Remember, this is not the html code, but a preview in frontpage:

http://www.sportsnimports.com/stuff/header.gif

Ignore the $strings. I use 'includes' in my header to make my life easier. Hopefully you can understand what I'm talking about here. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask them here. I'll be happy to attempt to help :)