Sticky K 2.0 general menu issues

Having been locked by Sozzled because of egregiously posting my question in "the wrong part of the forum." I will post it again here in hopes of getting an answer rather than a smack down.

I needed to restore my menu tabs, but before I did so I decided to install Kunena 2.0, in case that self-corrected the menu problem on its own. ( It did not, and I admit in retrospect that was stupidly optimistic.) So I went through the procedure in the FAQ and your post. Problem: I cannot find the "Create Menu" feature in the Kunena control panel. I went to Menu Manager in "Forum Tools". Its function appears to be checking for conflict that would inhibit the creation of Kunena menus, but does not generate the menus as 1.7 did?

If the team that released 2.0 knew that sites could be down until someone could get 2 days of free time, then I believe either 2.0 should not have been called stable until it actually was stable, or users should have been advised of the risks. I have more than three decades of software experience; the same professional ethics apply to volunteers that apply to paid professionals. One does not leave the user without alternatives, and tell her/him to wait until you get to the issue.
Thanks,

Aross

There is nothing broken, unstable, insecure, weird, wonderful or impossible to fix in setting up a menu structure for Kunena except for one small insignificant thing: Joomla!

If you search this forum you will find dozens/hundreds of messages where people have launched a broadside at the Kunena development team and, after we've explained the process, they've admitted that their condemnation of Kunena was, perhaps, a little hasty. For the 2 million or thereabouts downloads of Kunena, the incidence of people having menu issues is actually quite low. But we are not here to debate; we are here to deal with the difficulty that is called the Kunena menu .

I posted this message in one of three other topics that has started since the release of K 2.0:

sozzled wrote: The Joomla menu system is complicated and difficult. The Joomla menu system in J! 1.5 is different to the menu system in J! 1.6 and it's a little bit different again in J! 2.5. K 2.0.0 is software that was designed to be installed as easily as possible and to work on two different versions of Joomla (i.e. J 1.5 and J! 2.5) and that's what has made things difficult.

The Kunena developers have a choice:

(1) Produce an installation kit for Kunena and write a 5-page instruction manual to show people how, for each different version of Joomla, they need to build a menu so that everything would work 100% of the time; or

(2) Develop a process that installs Kunena, sets up the basic Kunena Menu that should work in 90% of the time.

The Kunena developers decided on the second choice.

We understand that, for many people, the Joomla menu system is almost impossibly difficult to understand. Some people may never totally understand how to use it properly. Within the limits of a self-help forum like this one we will do our best to explain what you need to do. But, in answer to the comment made by DTP2 ("Please, devs, have another look at this and improve if possible.") we're trying our hearts out!

For those people who require urgent, immediate, personalised help, I can probably fix most people's sites for them in about 15 minutes. I do not provide personalised, one-on-one service like this for free. If you read the information in the forum and use the techniques that we suggest, it may take you an hour or more but most people can solve their problems themselves and it will cost them nothing more than their own time. For those who cannot afford an hour or two then there are other alternatives but, instead of spending an hour fixing their problems, they will need to spend money to obtain such help. As I have always written:

Nothing is impossible. Everything has a price.

So, before I am deluged with thousands of emails asking me to spend 15 minutes of my time solving their problems, people need to understand that such personal services are not free and payment is required before starting the job.

Since I posted that topic I have not received a single request to provide a personalised service to fix someone's insuperable menu problem. This either indicates to me that people have somehow discovered the answers for themselves - which only goes to show that the difficulty level to solve was not really all that hard - or people are prepared to wait for someone else to fix the problem in an unspecified future point.

The alternatives are

(1) Read Customised Menus
(2) Buy one of several good books and learn about the Joomla menu system;
(3) Build a test site with standard Joomla, Kunena, nothing else and see how the menu is actually set up and apply those things to your production site;
(4) Pay someone to fix the problem for you;
(5) Study the forum, search the forum to discover what other people have learned and apply their understanding to your circumstances.

In K 2.0 there is no "create menu" feature in the control panel. This fact was discussed in Kunena Tab Menu Missing

K 2.0 is totally different to K 1.7. Questions about problems with K 1.7 belong in the K 1.7 section; questions about problems with K 2.0 belong in the K 2.0 section. Please try to remember that in future.

How Can I call you? Skype? Send you a pm? Please advise.

Skype. Would you not agreed that sending text back and forth once every day is taking a bit too long to achieve anything useful?

yes, I agree. I'm going to be traveling all day tomorrow so I'll try to skype you on Tues or Wed. Thanks for your offer to help. The Kunena menu issue is actually resolved for the moment even if not in the most elegant manner but still working.

I would like a yes or no answer to a simple question. Can one uninstall K 2.0 and reinstall K 1.7.2? I thought Sozzled mentioned in one of his posts that this was verbotten,but I have not been able to find that post again for reference.

My thought is to go back to a situation where I know that Kunena will produce the "traditional" K tabbed menu, but I am reluctant to try it given that I think it was said that one could not retrofit to 1.7.2.

I am not opposed to creating my own K menu structure in the main menu. Intuitively. however, I expect there to be a unique item menu type for each of the normal tabs. This is not the case. For instance, if I need to set up a rules page, there is no "Rules" menu type, unless one used the "custom content" menu type.

If someone could answer a couple of these questions I think I might be able to resolve my issues. If someone could assist me , it would be great. Also, I have a long history in writing procedures, technical, and user's manuals for the government. If I can contribute those skills and help release the logjam, I would be willing to do so.

Thanks,

ARoss