End-User Options - Navbar Forumjump- Adds a DHTML "Forum Jump" menu to your Navbar

Navbar Forumjump

This mod adds a popup menu to the navbar with quick links to all your forums.



If you like this, you can show your support by Rating it, Marking it as installed, Nominating for MOTM, and/or Donating to the author. Thanks, you rock.

Why would you want to install this?

1. Increases usability for your members.
2. Decreases server resources/usage.

How does this increase usability?

In forums I often find myself clicking on the "forum home" link to see the list of forums and then choose one to visit. With this mod, you simply click the "Forum Jump" menu, and down drops a dynamic menu with all your forums (represented in correct hierarchy of parents/children, and organized by category). The user can more easily visualize the structure of your forums, and can get to where they want to go quicker. And this is a lot prettier and better placed than the forum jump at the bottom of the pages.

How does this reduce server resources?

With this mod installed, the users will go directly to the next forum they want to visit without first going to the forum home. This saves the HTTP requests associated with a pageload, as well as the database queries required to generate the page.

All Features.

• Installation is a snap, just import the XML file
• The popup menu looks identical to the other built-in vB popup menus.
• Automatically generates the menu, if you add or remove forums, that's automatically reflected in the menu.
• The menu can optionally display a small icon that links to the last post next to the forum name.
• Respects forum permissions, hidden forums, etc. If the user is not permitted to view the forum, it won't show up, just like on the forum home page.
• No template edits needed.
• Admin control panel that explains everything, and offers many configuration options:
  • Enable / disable the mod
  • Show menu to everyone or only to logged-in members.
  • Optionally specify forums to exclude from the menu.
  • Choose to display the forumjump popup on the left or the right side of the navbar.
  • Choose to display the menu as one column, or separate each category (with its sub-forums) into its own column. You may also specify how many categories to display per column.
  • You define the characters to prepend to the forum titles to show the indented hierarchy of forums
  • Options to configure CSS styles and sizes for the menu. This allows you to shrink the menu if you have many forums by reducing the font size and the cell padding in the menu.
  • You may optionally style the currently selected forum differently than the rest (with CSS).
• The mod is fully phrased, including the ACP options and descriptions.

Changes it makes

Adds one plugin and a control panel options section (and its associated phrases). The menu is attached to the navbar using a template hook.

Installation

1. Download and uncompress the zip file.
2. Import the XML product file in the Admin Control panel.
3. Visit the Options page and see if you want to change any of the default settings. (If you're using less than vB 3.6.8 you'll need to visit the options and see how to manually insert the menu into your templates.)

Changelog/History

Version 1.0.8 Bug fix (Oct. 13, 2007)

Fixed bug when using the forumjump with vBa. (See post #145)

Version 1.0.7 Bug fixes and workarounds (Sept. 18, 2007)

Integrated fix for Smoothie's problems (Post #76 and on)
Fixed display bug from post #101
Workaround for logging out display problem (post #104)
Completely separated the auto-insert code from the manual template inserting.

Version 1.0.6 New Features (Sept. 17, 2007)

Workaround for menu display problem in Opera
New option to add a relative URL to prepend to links (helps when using vBa)
New option to not auto-display menu via template hooks. Provides better compatibility for vB < 3.6.8 and when not displaying menu in the navbar template.

Version 1.0.5 Internal Development - Not released

Version 1.0.4 New features (Sept. 12, 2007)

Added optional link (icon) to the latest post in each forum
Added admin options panel help system.
Added compatibility with vB 3.6.0 to 3.6.8

Version 1.0.3 New features (Sept. 11, 2007)

All error messages output as HTML comments (better end user experience)
You may now specify how many categories are displayed per column

Version 1.0.2 Bug fix (Sept. 10, 2007)

Fixed bug introduced in Version 1.0.1
Added more error checking
Added useful error messages for debugging.

Version 1.0.1 Bug Fixes and Enhancements (Sept. 10, 2007)

Fixed a bug when URLs have session IDs in them.
Added Option to disable the menu for non-logged-in visitors
Added Option to exclude forums

Version 1.0.0 Initial Release


Screenshots



Menu with the icon link to last post enabled.

[Analogpoint]

Originally Posted by carubmun

You have been great with all your help and now i just feel like a failure at vb..
Ive tried everything you have suggested and i cant seem to make it work right.
I can make it show up on the navbar but it ends up having this huge colored background and then actual ForumJump content comes out huge and with strange colors as well.
Of course it works great with default template, and it worked fine when i reverted certain parts of this template that 3.6.8 asked me to revert.

BTW, on this template... there is no <!-- nav buttons bar --> area in my navbar template, its in my header template.
I tried making the changes in header and in importing your whole bit of code you posted into navgar... but i still got ugly.

I have it up so you can see how it looks.

Don't feel like a failure, it takes some time to learn because it's a complex product.

If you want post or PM me with the contents of your header template and I'll try and tell you where to put the links.

[carubmun]

Originally Posted by Analogpoint

Don't feel like a failure, it takes some time to learn because it's a complex product.

If you want post or PM me with the contents of your header template and I'll try and tell you where to put the links.

Thats very awesome of you man.
Thanks for the help and for a great product.
I will PM you the header info.

[carubmun]

Thanks for the great help, its working a lot better now.

I wonder if there is a way to make the jumpmenu show the forums in a different order?
I have made a bunch of forums to not be included in the jump as to allow it to look a bit better, but i still would rather have all the small forums lumped into one row, while keeping the forums with lots of subforums all in one.

[redtailboa]

Can you make this work on the Nav side Menu?

[Analogpoint]

Originally Posted by redtailboa

Can you make this work on the Nav side Menu?

I'm not sure what the nav side menu is, but it should work. Follow the instructions in the ACP settings for when you don't auto display the forum jump.

[kyokushin4life]

Thanks for the plugin! I was wondering if you could tell me how to get the font size of the links in forumjump to be smaller? I bet I can change it in style/css? Where could I change this? thank you.

[Analogpoint]

Change the "CSS to Format all Links" in the options from font-size: 1.0em; to font-size: 0.9em; or font-size: 0.8em; or font-size: 0.7em; etc.

[kyokushin4life]

Wicked. One problem though. When i use the code. The category font becomes much smaller. The font size of the category is already smaller than other sub categories.

thank you.

[Analogpoint]

Yes, the CSS to Format all Links scales everything in the popup menu. If you want to change that, you'd have to modify the plugin.

If you're up for that, just find every instance of

class='thead'

in the XML file, and change it to

style='font-size:1.2em;' class='thead'

Do this in the XML file, then upload and overwrite the current product. You can change the font-size:1.2em bit to whatever you like.

[kyokushin4life]

Dear Analogpoint,
I think it would be nice to update this in your next version of your product as the category link becomes smaller than other subforum links. It may be just my style(template) but yer neat small feature to have.