Changing the Top Level Nav Menu from Displaying Categories to Links?

[Chinwag]

Hello,

just configuring a Magento CE 1.9 template and have a question.

How can I change the Top Level Nav Menu (id=advancedmenu) to display normal type website links, e.g. Contact, About Us, Terms and Conditions, Delivery, Search etc... instead of Categories?

Link to Home Page

I assume that there must be an easy way or something I've missed in configuring the Categories.

Thank you for any help,

Mark.

[sherrie]

Hi @Chinwag, to do this you'll need to do a bit of custom programming. There are a couple ways of going about it:

• Create a blank category and a redirect to go to it
• Add a new link via a hook and observer

Let me know if either of those help you resolve your issue.

[Chinwag]

Good evening Sherrie,

thank you for taking the time to reply to my question.

Your first solution involves Categories, which is why I'm trying to customise the Nav Menu in the first place, as I have numerous Categories of countries and food types.

The second method looks a more likely solution, although I'm using a template purchased from Template Mela, which doesn't have a config.xml file. Will Magento default to a system config.xml file, if so where is this located please?

Also, the article doesn't state a location or name of the the file to add the menu append code?

Thank you again, I'm new to Magento, but have many years of experience with MediaSurface, Documentum and SharePoint.

Best wishes,

Mark.

[sherrie]

Hi @Chinwag,

Ah, it was my understanding you simply wanted to add a link in addition to the categories.

You'll find config.xml in your base Magento directory under app/etc/config.xml. This post on StackExchange goes into a bit more detail if you're following the observer method: http://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/7329/adding-links-to-category-menu

There are also extensions that do this if you prefer not to get into the code: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/catalogsearch/result/?q=menu&pl=0

Cheers,

Sherrie

[Chinwag · Accepted solution]

Evening Sherrie,

and thank you again for your time.

Sorry for any confusion, but as you can see, the Categories are disrupting the screen layout, and I don't think that they should be there as Menu items. Perhaps under a link such as "Shop". Therefore the Menu would contain standard links such as Contact, About, Terms and Conditions, Delivery etc...

I was thinking that it might be possible to create a Static Block (SB) and instantiate the SB in the Menu call routine?

<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('navbar_links1')->toHtml() ?>

Or tempted just to hard-code the menus in the top.phtml as with the "Home" menu:

        <div class="menu">
            <div class="parentMenu menu0 home_link">
                <a href="<?php echo $this->getUrl('') ?>">
                    <span><?php echo $this->__('Home'); ?></span>
                </a>
            </div>
        </div>
        <div class="menu">
            <div class="parentMenu menu0 about_link">
                <a href="<?php echo $this->getUrl('about') ?>">
                    <span><?php echo $this->__('About'); ?></span>
                </a>
            </div>
        </div>

 I'm looking to cut down on changing system specific files and not too many Template file changes for future updates etc.

Thank you so much again,

Mark.

[Brent W Peterson]

What do you set those items to "Not Display in Navigation"?

Catalog-> Category -> General Tab -> Include in Navigation Menu = NO

[Chinwag]

Evening,

Include in Navigation Menu is set to "Yes" otherwise the Categories won't appear as part of the vertical list of available Categories, left hand column options, see image in above message.

Thanks for your help and interest,

Mark.