Question Custom Kunena Menus for different categories?

Hello,

I have been looking for sometime for the answer to my question and have been unable to locate a suitable option, so i will explain what im trying to do.

We have a large site that caters to the gaming community, and in our site we support multiple games, we wanted to create custom menus link from each of the section in our site as we are using template overrides to allow each section to look unique to the game it is catering to.

We have created different Joomla menus for each unique section and in these menu's we want to create a custom Forums link to show exactly what we want for that category.

I have tried to create a new Index page and select the categories i want to be visible however this always goes back to the main index page, even if i rename it to index-newgame.

Am i missing something here? or is this simply not possible. Again our main reason for this is to use template overrides and create specific forums to pertain to a given game. We will also have one main forums section where all games will visible.

So the Main menu would look like this:

Main category (All forums)

Game #1 (only categories we select)

Game #2 (only categories we select)

Game #3 (only categories we select)

Is this possible?

Thanks for the great component and support. If you need more information please feel free to ask.

Kind Regards
Alan

Is it possible? I'm not sure I fully understand the problem but when people ask me, "Is it possible?" my answer is, "Nothing is impossible but everything has a cost."

I think, in order to address this custom-design issue, I would need to spend time discussing the issues with you and time looking over your website. The forum (here) is probably not going to be the most effective way to examine the issues and provide you with a definite solution. The best that I can do, here, in this forum is to refer you to the general information in the Wiki.

I'll leave the question up to you about how you would best like to handle the situation from here. I'm fairly confident that we can find a solution for you (as long as we all completely understand exactly what you're trying to achieve) but it may take some time getting there and (as we all know) "time" is not a totally free commodity.

For your information, I've done something a little bit similar in one of my websites, but I'm not 100% sure that what I've accomplished is exactly what you want, either.

Yes, it is possible. Therefore, there is the Kunena menu item "Category List".
But the easiest way is:
Create for each game a own Main Section (Top Level) and a category. Such as:

Main Section Game 1
- Category Game 1
Main Section Game 2
- Categoriy Game 2

Then click in Frontend on the Main Section Game 1 (or whatever) and copy the relative url from the browser address (websiteaddress.com/forum/mainsectiongame-1).
Create in the main menu the menu item External URL and to paste these address. The same for the next main section etc..

Or you create for these main sections the menu items "Category List". But Kunena menu items are not allowed in others menus ( see here ). You need in addition the menu item "Menu Item Alias" in the main menu. That would be the correctly way.

Hello,

Thanks for the reply, i knew it was possible not sure what steps needed to be taken.

But what if we want other Top Level categories to also appear in these new sections, because some of our top level sections do apply to all games. Is that possible too?
We have already created new top level sections with category under each. I was not making the menu buttons correctly and i also tried to make a secondary Kunena menu but that did not help or was not meant to be done.

I will play with this and let you know how it works out for me. I would love to see a video on how to do this.

Thanks for your help.

Alan

I am very sorry but for some reason i cant get this to work, it is possible i do not understand the steps fully.

I have created 3 top level forums with categories under each one. If i make a new menu button and use the Kunena category option it works only showing the one top level section i have created with no kunena menu navigation visible.

I cant seem to get the menu alias working as it always goes to the main default forums. Maybe you can explain better the exact steps i need to take.

Sorry for all the questions, i just want to get this working especially if it is possible.

Kind Regards
Alan

Hello,

Ok well i have created these new Category lists menu links in my Kunena menu, and selected the category i wanted in each one, then linked my menu to this new link and it works well. I have only a few issues, am i not able to select more then one category in the lists menu option? it seems like i should be able to. Also i lose my template overrides once the user clicks into the forums under this category. Is there a way to keep the template overrides for the entire section?

Thanks for all your support so far!

Alan

I have only a few issues, am i not able to select more then one category in the lists menu option?

Yes, that's correct. You can choose only one section or category. This is each the Top Level for this menu item.

Also i lose my template overrides once the user clicks into the forums under this category. Is there a way to keep the template overrides for the entire section?

Unfortunately I can help nothing, I do not know where, or what you've changed. It is also not a problem of Kunena.

Ok thanks for the update!

All we have done is use Joomla template Overrides to set unique designs to different sections of our site. Each section uses its own background/menu and logos but its basically the same Rocket themes/Gantry template throughout the site, with different variations.

When i set the template override to that menu button it shows the override correctly, however when you click into the category it goes back to the default template setting. So i was wondering if there was something we could do to allow it to hold the override. If you need to see the site it not a problem however i do not want to post it publicly. So if you can provide an option for me to get you the URL privately its no problem.

Thanks again for all the help

Alan

I have been doing lots of testing over the past day with the menus and template overrides with Rocket theme and Gantry. We are running Joomla 3.3.2, Kunena 3.0.5, everything else in the site is up to date.

If i make a new Kunena menu item, "category list" and set the template override it works perfectly. However it seems i must have the menu button for each section or it will lose the override and display the default site template (no override). Does anyone have experience with overrides and maybe can help shed light on this?

Also i wanted to ask will they ever make it so that we can use the New menu option "Home" to have different versions, this to me seems like it is already built in as the home menu button allows the selection of specif categories and or sections. If i could simply make new Home pages say home, home2, home3 and so on it would be the easiest way to do this. I have tried to make a home2 but it simply does not work and always defaults to the home, is there some way to use this and get it working? Or is this something planned for future versions?

Kind Regards
Alan

However it seems i must have the menu button for each section or it will lose the override and display the default site template (no override).

Yes, that's correct. You need menu button for each section. You can hide the tabs via css afterwards. That's the easiest way.