[HOW TO - vB4] Create a New Tab in the navbar
 

Here's a pretty simple method for creating a new tab in the navbar, along with a submenu to go along with it. All you need is a unique condition for when your tab will be shown. What you will be making is a plugin to create the Nav Link along with a submenu which Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, and Drop Down which then drops down and has SubLink 1, SubLink 2, and SubLink 3. This is shown below.

NOTE: This is for 4.0.x and 4.1.x. In 4.2.x, you should be using the Navigation Manager.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2011/07/104.jpg


This article is NOT to be used just to add another link to a submenu. It is for creating the Nav Link tab along with all the submenus. Again, if all you want is to add submenus to an existing tab, then this article is NOT for you!!!

This article is also for use by users who understand the basics of conditions and can write them. The navbar is not really an easy thing to play with if you don't know what you are doing - I think even Wayne said it had issues - so don't try this if you don't understand how to write a condition.

OK, with that out of the way....

Here's the basic template for making your new tab:

Create a plugin (Plugins & Products) > Add New Plugin:
hook location - process_templates_complete *
Title - New Tab for Navbar
Execution Order - 5
(* I used to have this listed as global_state_check but then noticed vb themselves use the process_templates_complete hook location, so I changed it.)

Things to take note of:

Your condition MUST be unique! If you use a condition that is also going to evaluate to true for another tab, then they will both be highlighted and the wrong submenu may show up underneath.

The 'seletednavtab' must also be a unique name. Again, if you have two tabs with the same 'selectednavtab' name, then both tabs will be highlighted.

You may use a different template_hook here - it just depends on where you want your tab to be - navtab_start and navtab_middle are also available.


ragtek also posted an article to do the same thing only using a template with the plugin - [HOW TO - vB4] Create a New Tab in the navbar (with template)



Originally posted on vb.org 2009-10-27.

Other related articles of possible interest:
[HOW TO - vB4] Remove the vB Default Navtabs
[HOW TO - vB4] Create your own vBulletin page

Thanks, Lynne! Good work, will come in handy!

What are we suppose to type in for THIS_SCRIPT? I tried "index".

I made link.php to read as index.php.

What specifically are we suppose to put in for "unique_name"? Can we type anything like rabbit or dog?

When I click on the forum logo the newly created Nav Link shows up with its menu and submenu now instead of the forum.php Forum tab and its menu.

But when I click back on the Forum tab it does not highlight nor do its menu show up, but the newly created Nav Link with its menu remains highlighted.

It gets even stranger. When I click on the Home tab it works, but then try to click back on the Nav Link it doesn't let me.

And when I am in the Nav Link and click on the Nav Link it sends me to Home Tab with its menu.

Help.

Hi Lynne,
I've copied the whole code and only changed link.php to another page, but it still does not 'select' itself on the navbar. I tried with a few unique names and such. No go. Here's the code I've tried.

Thanks again for all your help lately. Don't know what VB would do without ya :p

What is your goal here? When do you want this tab to be active? You want it active when a user is on the forum.php page (that one is defined as "index")? That will be a bit weird since you click the Forum tab and it goes to forum.php but you aren't going to have the Forum tab highlighted this way because the "index" page also the same as the the main entry page for you when the Forums link comes up active? If so, that condition may be a bit weird in which case you may want to change it to be something a bit more unique. So, first we need to define when you want that tab to be Active.

Same with you.... went do you want this tab to be Active? That is the condition you need to write. Most people want it active when they are on a specific page. At the top of that vbulletin page, THIS-SCRIPT is defined like this:
In this case, your condition would be:
The condition does NOT have to be based on THIS_SCRIPT, but it DOES have to be UNIQUE to that tab.

Lynne,

Tell us what to type in for "yourpage", "unique_name", "link.php" so it works like a tab is suppose to work.

When I click on my logo I want the Forum tab to start up as it does from the install of 4.0 and not go immediately to the Nav Link. Then I want to go to my Nav Link tab when I click on it with its menu without getting jumped around and without any of the above mentioned problems.

What do you want on your navbar? Why are you adding a new tab? I can't tell you what to put there if I have no clue what it is for.

Right now, if you have 'index' in for 'yourpage' then yes, if you click on Forums it will highlight your new tab instead because your condition is true (you are on the forum.php page which is defined as THIS_SCRIPT == index). When do you want the Nav Link to be highlighted? It will be highlighted when $vbulletin->options['selectednavtab']='unique_name' and $vbulletin->options['selectednavtab']='unique_name' when THIS_SCRIPT == "yourpage".

I just want the Nav Link to work like you would expect it to work and with its menus of various external and internal links like I had with 3.8.4. Tell me what to fill in for "yourpage", "unique_name", "link.php" to able to make that happen.

Very useful indeed. Thank you.

yourpage would be what THIS_SCRIPT is defined as at the top of the page you click on to make the navtab active

unique_name is any unique word

link.php is the page you wish the user to go to when they click the tab

I think what you are saying is that using that set of code you can't get the Nav Link with menus and submenues to work like I had it working with 3.8.4. I'll wait till someone figures something out.

I don't know if you can. I have no idea what you had working - you've supplied no details whatsoever on it (no details, no images, no anything).

In post #6 I said, "When I click on my logo I want the Forum tab to start up as it does from the install of 4.0 and not go immediately to the Nav Link. Then I want to go to my Nav Link tab when I click on it with its menu without getting jumped around and without any of the above mentioned problems."

Basically, just like you would expect any link to work, with sublinks and drop down box, like the other tabs work. Pretty simple: able to put in whatever links I want.

I have a feeling before 4.0 Gold comes out, they will provide this as an automated feature. It's a no brainer.

And what is the link that your logo goes to? I have no clue. So, I can't suggest what to put in place of link.php, since you have't posted the link. I also can't suggest what to use for 'yourpage' since I don't know what page it is. I need *details*. If I only get general information from you, I can only give you general information back.

By clicking on the logo the basic navbar takes one to the forums page and highlights the forum tab. That's what I want, obviously. I don't want that to change. I don't want the Nav Link to be highlighted when I click on the logo which was happening with 'yourpage' as 'index' and 'link.php' as 'index.php'. I want to be able to add some external links and some internal links to the menu of Nav Link. I have no idea what to name 'yourpage' and 'link.php' for the Nav Link to work like any normal functioning tab with a drop down menu. When I click on the other existing tabs I don't want the Nav Link tab to be highlighted as the case is now. I don't want to get jumped to the Home tab by clicking on the Nav Link. By clicking on the Nav Link I want the menu to show up for the Nav Link. I want all existing tabs to work as they normally do and not be interferred with by the Nav Link, e.g. by clicking on the Forum tab, the Nav Link tab is highlighted with its menu.

Basically I want it to work like any link would work with its menu. Pretty simple. I just don't know what to put in for values for 'yourpage' and 'link.php' to make this happen or if it is even possible. For example, on your own site what would you put in for these values to make it work which I could try out also to see if it works for me too?

If it doesn't work then it doesn't work. Need to try something else: rewrite the code.

There's also a other way adding own tabs: http://vbcodex.com/showthread.php?66...the-vB4-Navbar

OK, I'll give you an example of what I did on my site and maybe it will help you figure out what you really want..

I have torrents offered on my site. I have a torrents.php page, and few forums for the torrents and some upload pages and stuff. So, I want to link to that page - torrents.php. So, I have "link.php" set to "torrents.php". And, I have THIS_SCRIPT defined as "TORRENTS" at the top of the torrents.php page. Since I also want it to show that link when they are in the two torrents forums, I included that in the condition also. So, I used this as my unique condition:
As for my "unique_name", I just used "torrents".

This is the result on my site:
Attachment 106152



If all you want to do is add a link to one of the existing sub-menus (like before New Posts in the Forum tab), then you can either just modify the navbar directly or use an existing template_hook (in the example of before New Posts, then the "navbar_start" template_hook) just like you did in vb3. This tutorial is for adding a whole new tab with a sub-menu.

Thank you Lynne. As usual, your tutorial makes it easier to relearn vb

Seems like a lot of work just to add two or or three new links but o.k.. I think I can do this.

--------------- Added [DATE]1258476269[/DATE] at [TIME]1258476269[/TIME] ---------------

o.k.. I'm stumped. Sorry...

Does this article help me create more drop down tabs or more links horizontally across the navbar? For example my beta site navbar says - Home Page New Products News Events

All I want to do is add about 5 more links to the right of that. When I created some sections the names of the sections appeared in the navbar by themselves. The new sections I created don't. Is there some setting I can just change the qty of links to show and they will appear?

I'm new to tweaking my forum so I'm sorry if this is a really stupid question.

--------------- Added [DATE]1258476853[/DATE] at [TIME]1258476853[/TIME] ---------------

Oh, I see what I did. I just renamed a few sections. In the link it still calls the old name. Example, my new products section used to be called travel.

I really don't know what you are asking about or what you want. This article is about how to add a new tab - like Home, Forums, What's New?, Blogs - and the little sub-sections below them. If all you want to do is add to the sub-section menu, then you would just use a template_hook.

Please visit http://www.pro-touring.com/forum_new...the-front-page

In the upper left on the navbar it says

* Home Page * New Products * News * Events

To the right of events I want to add *Tech of the week *Member of the month * Advertise with us

or something like that.

Then this is not the article for you. This article would help you add a whole new tab next to What's New. The sections in the CMS are added through the Section Manager. Don wrote an article (or blog, I forget) on how to do this over on vb.com

Hmm, I am able to add sections. I have 6 or 8 of them and I added them through the control panel but they don't show at the top. Thanks! I will head over.

How do I show links forum categories navbar? Same as forum blog cms

I don't understand what you mean.

Lynne,

How do you add them for a certain usergroup?

Basically what I want to do is add a linked drop down for private members linking to various sections that only the private members can see, things like arcade.php, gameroom.php etc etc.

Is it...

I also want to link to external links, can I do this or am I better doing it via the bottom code
Thanks:confused:

Please www.arenatr.com look top navbar link (Forum categories)

If you want to add in a condition, you could do something like this for say, arcade.php to only usergroup 5,6, ad 7:
That isn't tested, but it should work. And, there is no reason you can't make external links.

Sorry, but I still don't understand your question. That is not a vb4 site at all.

Thank you very much lynne, am at a loss thou with the
Where do you get that from?

When you create your own page, you have to define this_script;)

Right... think i've sussed it,

I put in index which displayed it :) BUT.....

the rest of the links that were already there disappeared :(

anyway of keeping them and adding the drop down at the end of

* New Posts
* Private Messages
* FAQ
* Calendar
* Community
* Forum Actions
* Quick Links

thank you thou lynne :up:

Sorry, but where do i add this code to?

Thanks :)

+1 here, do we just throw it in the navbar template then:confused:

Is it possible to add a unique condition to a Section page? or barring that is there a way to use the page title, section title or SEO URL Alias perhaps? (sorry if this is obvious - I am new to php) I would like to have a section named "Marketplace" for information on my classifieds program. It's an important part of my site so needs to be more visable, plus I want to add external links to my classifieds pages for easier navigation.

I successfully created my new tab and named it Marketplace
link.php is set to "http://www.mydomain.com/content.php?2-Marketplace"
unique_name is Marketplace

I think you must place the code into the plugin system at global_state_check , but I could be mistaken, truthfully I am a bit lost on this one lol

Lynne states where the code has to go - into a plugin at:
Don't know how she could make that clearer ;)

If you want to just add to the submenu list that is there, then this is NOT the article for you. This article tells you how to add a whole TAB and then submenu links under it. If all you want is to add to the existing submenu, then I am pretty sure there are template_hooks to use.
It goes into a plugin, as I said in my post. However, read what I wrote above... this article shows you how to add an entire tab - it isn't used to just add to an existing tab.
I haven't tried many other conditions with this. If you want to do it for a Section, then you would also have to modify the existing navbar to not show the Home tab when you are on that section, otherwise it isn't unique. Right now, the Home tab shows whenever you are in the CMS area of the site. So, you'd have to change that condition to say "in the CMS but NOT in section xx" otherwise both tabs will be highlighted and only one of the submenus will be shown. I'm not sure what the exact condition would be since I'm not that familiar with all the variable names used with the new CMS ($sectionid == 2 ?).

Thanks Lynne,
http://www.bizimforumlar.com/vbtest/test.php

Sure, if you understand it all to the level that Lynne does then that might be 'very' clear, but to persons like myself it meant absolutely nothing to me. Had we been directed to the plugin manager as a clear and helpful guide for the not so knowledgeable in vbulletin coding would have then we wouldn't have to ask such boring question would we. Seriously, I get sick to death of that sort of tone, why couldn't you have directed us to the plugin manager instead of giving us your sarcasm.

You do know what a smiliey is and means, do you? Now, if I wanted to be ironic or sarcastic about something, I'd point you to the Wikipedia article on emoticons. But I don't, however hard you try to misunderstand me :)