What happened to the abililty to edit the sites navigation

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What happened to the abililty to edit the sites navigation

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It seems like this functionality has dissapeared from the site administration section of the control panel.  Has this functionality been superceded by new functionality or is it gone forever?

Verified Answer
  • Very interested in this too. The new navigation system does not fit well into our needs. Anyway to manually override or add to the navigation for example "Home", "Blog", "Forum", Wiki" and then content pages as sub/breadcrumb items such as About, Contact Us would be perfect?

  • bump !!!

  • Can we get confirmation whether this feature is included?

  • Also looking for this one.

    Please help!

  • I'm not an official Telligent answerer, but I can assure you that dynamic navigation has been removed from the Fiji theme. As far as I can tell (and I've been neck-deep in Telligent Community for the last several days) you cannot get away from the group-centric navigation using the Fiji theme.

    The GroupNavigation widget is configured in the HeaderFragments element in the theme.config file, so you could remove it there and replace it with your own custom navigation widget. That would take development of a new widget though, which is more difficult than the out-of-the-box dynamic navigation that came with CS 2008.5.

  • The dynamic navigation controls are still present in the Evolution 5 platform, but they're are not exposed.

    As John said, you would need to write create a custom header fragment which could then use the NavigationList control to show custom links.  You would then need to add a CommunityServer.Controls.DynamicNavigationCustomControl to your theme's theme.config to allow you to configure links in your site theme - have a look at how it was implemented in the CS2008.5 hawaii theme.config for more details.

  • I'm trying to do the exact same thing, and it's pretty frustrating.

    Alex, could you explain further or walk us through on how to enable customizing the navigation?  I'd really appreciate your insight.  Thanks!

  • I am in the same boat ;)

  • It seemed like Alex Crome had an idea.

  • To restore the CS2008.5 navigation - where you specified navigation through the control panel.

    1. Make a backup of your existing ~/utility/headerfragments/core/groupnavigation.ascx ~/themes/fiji/theme.config files and ~/controlpanel/settings/themeconfiguration.aspx files
    2. Replace the ~/utility/headerfragments/groupnavigation.ascx file with the below

      <%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %>
      <%@ Import Namespace="CommunityServer.Components"%>

      <script runat="server">
         
      protected ThemeConfigurationData themeData = CSContext.Current.ThemePreviewCookie.IsPreviewing(SiteThemeContext.Instance()) ? ThemeConfigurationDatas.GetThemeConfigurationData(SiteThemeContext.Instance(), "fiji", CSContext.Current.ThemePreviewCookie.PreviewID, true) : ThemeConfigurationDatas.GetThemeConfigurationData(SiteThemeContext.Instance(), "fiji", true);

      public bool IsOneBarNavigation()
      {
          return themeData.GetBoolValue("onebarnavigation", false);
      }
         
      </script>

      <div id="ParentGroupListContainer" class="parent-container" style="width: 100%" runat="server">
      <div class="parent-sub-container">
          <CSControl:NavigationList runat="server" Property="navigationItems" Theme="<%= themeData.ThemeName %>" Level="0" RenderChildrenInContextMenu="false"  >  
              <LeaderTemplate>
                  <div class="navigation-list-header"></div>
                  <ul class="navigation-list parent">
              </LeaderTemplate>
              <ItemTemplate>
                  <CSControl:ConditionalContent runat="server">
                      <ContentConditions><CSControl:CSLinkPropertyValueComparison runat="server" ComparisonProperty="IsSelected" Operator="IsSetOrTrue" /></ContentConditions>
                      <TrueContentTemplate><li class="navigation-item selected entry"></TrueContentTemplate>
                      <FalseContentTemplate><li class="navigation-item entry"></FalseContentTemplate>
                  </CSControl:ConditionalContent>
                  <CSControl:CSLinkData runat="server" LinkTo="Link" Property="Text" />
              </ItemTemplate>
              <TrailerTemplate>
                  </ul>
                  <div class="navigation-list-footer"></div>
              </TrailerTemplate>
          </CSControl:NavigationList>
      </div>
      </div>
      <CSControl:NavigationList runat="server" Theme="<%= themeData.ThemeName %>"  Property="navigationItems" Level="1" ShowHeaderFooterOnNone="false">  
          <DisplayConditions><CSControl:CustomCondition CustomResult="<%# !IsOneBarNavigation() %>" runat="server" /></DisplayConditions>
          <NoneTemplate></NoneTemplate>
          <HeaderTemplate>
              <div id="ChildGroupListContainer">
                  <div class="navigation-list-header"></div>
                  <ul class="navigation-list child">
          </HeaderTemplate>
              <ItemTemplate><CSControl:CSLinkData runat="server" CssClass="navigation-item entry" Tag="Li" LinkTo="Link" Property="Text" /></ItemTemplate>
              <FooterTemplate>
                  </ul>
                  <div class="navigation-list-footer"></div>
              </div>
          </FooterTemplate>
      </CSControl:NavigationList>

       

    3. Add the following into ~/themes/fiji/theme.config
      <propertyGroup resourceName="Navigation" resourceFile="ThemeResources.xml">
          <property id="navigationItems" resourceName="NavigationItems" resourceFile="ThemeResources.xml" dataType="Custom" descriptionResourceName="NavigationItems_Description" descriptionResourceFile="ThemeResources.xml" controlType="CommunityServer.Controls.DynamicNavigationCustomControl, CommunityServer.Controls" maximumDepth="2" />
      </propertyGroup>

       

    4. Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/settings/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control.
      function ContentFragments_Update(cfConfigurationData) {
          if (cfConfigurationData != null && _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId) {
              var cfState = document.getElementById('ContentFragments_' + _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId);
              if (cfState)
                  cfState.value = cfState.value.split(':')[0] + ':' + cfConfigurationData;
          }

         _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId = null;
      }     

    You can now specify your navigation through the Fiji theme configuration - you can specify up to two levels of depth.  If you enable the "Only Show One Level of Navigation" option, the second level will never be shown.

  • Alex - thanks for that. Can I therefore ask (or presume) a few questions (positions):

    1. The current CS (five) 5 release is really only suitable for those Communities oriented around Groups.
    2. I cannot find a way to move from Applications (forums, blogs, media, articles) at the root of a site to Groups without either completely losing navigation to those applications or losing a clear view of site activity?
    3. If I do organize a nested structure of Groups activity from sub-groups doesn't seem visible upon a parent (or grand-parent) group. Therefore action in a Forum/Blog/Wiki in Georgia is never logged in North America activity.
    4. Will the option to revert to traditional Navigation - and the standard Control Panel method of customization - be additive to CS (five) 5 Service Pack 1?

    Hope you can help solve some of these head-scratchers.

    Nick

  • Nick-- A few quick responses to your questions above:

    Is Telligent Community 5 only suitable for Communities oriented around groups?  I'd argue no--although there's no doubt that the default Fiji theme is oriented primarily around topic/group-based navigation rather than application navigation, I'd argue that there aren't very many communities that aren't focused around a set of topics.  I think what we've seen in the past was more topic-based forums and general sitewide instances of blogs, galleries, and wikis.  Unless you just have a completely flat small site with just a single forum/topic-area, most sites will benefit from a navigation based on the way most end-users think:  around topics they want to talk about rather than the correct "application" to interact with.
    Now, I don't pretend that group-based navigation can't be improved.  One small step that we want to take is the ability to set a default application per group.  Let's say that you have a group that's 99% forums conversations.  Why make your users go to the group landing page first before moving to the forums?  We could just have the "default" page for that group be the forum landing page instead.  When you start thinking about the flexibility just that small change offers people, I think that we'll have a product that more easily adapts to the vast array of different communities running on Telligent's platform.
    Will we have the old navigation built into the Service Pack?  No, we will not, although we are adding a new, simplified version of the Fiji navigation bar that should be vastly less confusing for everybody.  It will be a single bar across the top of the page that displays the top-level groups with dropdowns that show the subgroups of the selected top-level group.  We also know that we need to add support to add custom links to *any* navigation.  I do not know at this time whether that is going to be a service pack fix or a 5.1 feature.
    Hope that this helps somewhat.
  • With your other questions

     

    2. Can you run the following two queries against your database for me after moving applications.  Do you get any results for either query?

     

    Select NodeId, SectionID, Name, ApplicationType, ApplicationKey from cs_sections

    where NodeId not in (select NodeId from cs_Nodes)

     

     

    Select g.Name as NodeGroupName, (Select g2.Name from cs_Groups g2 where g2.GroupID = s.GroupID) as SectionGroupName, (Select t.ApplicationName from cs_ApplicationType t where t.ApplicationType = s.ApplicationType) as ApplicationType,  s.Name, s.SectionID, s.ApplicationKey

    From

     cs_Sections s

     join cs_Nodes n on s.NodeId = n.NodeId

     join cs_Groups g on n.ParentNodeId = g.NodeId

    Where g.GroupID <> (Select g2.GroupID from cs_Groups g2 where g2.GroupID = s.GroupID)

     

    3. By default this option is enabled for any groups created during an upgrade from CS2008.x but not for new groups made with TC5.  Unfortunantly this option is not exposed in the UI, but you can change it by updating the IncludeChildrenInActivityStreams column in cs_Groups.  

     

     

    Alex Crome

    o: + 44 203 178 3010

    telligent.com

     

    From: Nick Harrington [mailto:bounce-Nick_Harrington@communities.telligent.com]
    Sent: 16 July 2009 15:04
    To: features_community@communities.telligent.com
    Subject: Re: [Features and Functionality - Telligent Community] What happened to the abililty to edit the sites navigation

     

    Alex - thanks for that. Can I therefore ask (or presume) a few questions (positions):

    1. The current CS (five) 5 release is really only suitable for those Communities oriented around Groups.
    2. I cannot find a way to move from Applications (forums, blogs, media, articles) at the root of a site to Groups without either completely losing navigation to those applications or losing a clear view of site activity?
    3. If I do organize a nested structure of Groups activity from sub-groups doesn't seem visible upon a parent (or grand-parent) group. Therefore action in a Forum/Blog/Wiki in Georgia is never logged in North America activity.
    4. Will the option to revert to traditional Navigation - and the standard Control Panel method of customization - be additive to CS (five) 5 Service Pack 1?

    Hope you can help solve some of these head-scratchers.

    Nick


  • Scrap my previous response for your third question.

    If you go to a group homepage and configure the Activity Message List widget, there's an option to include activity from child groups.

  • I tried this out and had no problem getting the old style navigation back!! Thanks Alex!

    The only change that I could see that needs to be made to the instructions are as follows:

    "Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control."

    should read

    "Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/Settings/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control."

    notice the addition of settings in the path, other than that it worked like a charm!

  • joemorel

    [...] we are adding a new, simplified version of the Fiji navigation bar that should be vastly less confusing for everybody.  It will be a single bar across the top of the page that displays the top-level groups with dropdowns that show the subgroups of the selected top-level group.  We also know that we need to add support to add custom links to *any* navigation.  I do not know at this time whether that is going to be a service pack fix or a 5.1 feature.

    Hope that this helps somewhat.

    Thanks for letting us know! I'm sure my users will appreciate the more-familiar navigation and ability to add non-group links.

  • Alex - as requested:

    General Biodiesel,Site Root,Weblog,General Biodiesel,99,general_biodiesel

    Web site,Site Root,Weblog,Biodieselnow.com Blog,79,site

    Nick

  • Hi,

    I get custom navigation but how do I make a sub-nav using that in TC, I notice that 'One Bar navigation' option is not checked so I should see two nav bars, how to do that?

  • The second navigation bar will only be shown when

    a) Telligent Community can determine the currently selected navigation item

    b) You have specified sub navigation items for the selected navigation item in the custom navigation configuration.

  • Alex thanks for this. It really helps me to address an issue my users are having. Question this does seem to break the ability to have the drop downs under then menu. Is there a way to still have the drop downs for sub menu items and still use your mod listed above? I'm mainly talking about Articles. I created one and put it under one of the default items. It shows up on the secondary menu, but does not drop down.

    I'm guessing that was the reason for the third mod where it would cause some other issue?

    Thanks

    Bruce

All Replies
  • Very interested in this too. The new navigation system does not fit well into our needs. Anyway to manually override or add to the navigation for example "Home", "Blog", "Forum", Wiki" and then content pages as sub/breadcrumb items such as About, Contact Us would be perfect?

  • bump !!!

  • Can we get confirmation whether this feature is included?

  • Also looking for this one.

    Please help!

  • I'm not an official Telligent answerer, but I can assure you that dynamic navigation has been removed from the Fiji theme. As far as I can tell (and I've been neck-deep in Telligent Community for the last several days) you cannot get away from the group-centric navigation using the Fiji theme.

    The GroupNavigation widget is configured in the HeaderFragments element in the theme.config file, so you could remove it there and replace it with your own custom navigation widget. That would take development of a new widget though, which is more difficult than the out-of-the-box dynamic navigation that came with CS 2008.5.

  • The dynamic navigation controls are still present in the Evolution 5 platform, but they're are not exposed.

    As John said, you would need to write create a custom header fragment which could then use the NavigationList control to show custom links.  You would then need to add a CommunityServer.Controls.DynamicNavigationCustomControl to your theme's theme.config to allow you to configure links in your site theme - have a look at how it was implemented in the CS2008.5 hawaii theme.config for more details.

  • I'm trying to do the exact same thing, and it's pretty frustrating.

    Alex, could you explain further or walk us through on how to enable customizing the navigation?  I'd really appreciate your insight.  Thanks!

  • I am in the same boat ;)

  • It seemed like Alex Crome had an idea.

  • To restore the CS2008.5 navigation - where you specified navigation through the control panel.

    1. Make a backup of your existing ~/utility/headerfragments/core/groupnavigation.ascx ~/themes/fiji/theme.config files and ~/controlpanel/settings/themeconfiguration.aspx files
    2. Replace the ~/utility/headerfragments/groupnavigation.ascx file with the below

      <%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %>
      <%@ Import Namespace="CommunityServer.Components"%>

      <script runat="server">
         
      protected ThemeConfigurationData themeData = CSContext.Current.ThemePreviewCookie.IsPreviewing(SiteThemeContext.Instance()) ? ThemeConfigurationDatas.GetThemeConfigurationData(SiteThemeContext.Instance(), "fiji", CSContext.Current.ThemePreviewCookie.PreviewID, true) : ThemeConfigurationDatas.GetThemeConfigurationData(SiteThemeContext.Instance(), "fiji", true);

      public bool IsOneBarNavigation()
      {
          return themeData.GetBoolValue("onebarnavigation", false);
      }
         
      </script>

      <div id="ParentGroupListContainer" class="parent-container" style="width: 100%" runat="server">
      <div class="parent-sub-container">
          <CSControl:NavigationList runat="server" Property="navigationItems" Theme="<%= themeData.ThemeName %>" Level="0" RenderChildrenInContextMenu="false"  >  
              <LeaderTemplate>
                  <div class="navigation-list-header"></div>
                  <ul class="navigation-list parent">
              </LeaderTemplate>
              <ItemTemplate>
                  <CSControl:ConditionalContent runat="server">
                      <ContentConditions><CSControl:CSLinkPropertyValueComparison runat="server" ComparisonProperty="IsSelected" Operator="IsSetOrTrue" /></ContentConditions>
                      <TrueContentTemplate><li class="navigation-item selected entry"></TrueContentTemplate>
                      <FalseContentTemplate><li class="navigation-item entry"></FalseContentTemplate>
                  </CSControl:ConditionalContent>
                  <CSControl:CSLinkData runat="server" LinkTo="Link" Property="Text" />
              </ItemTemplate>
              <TrailerTemplate>
                  </ul>
                  <div class="navigation-list-footer"></div>
              </TrailerTemplate>
          </CSControl:NavigationList>
      </div>
      </div>
      <CSControl:NavigationList runat="server" Theme="<%= themeData.ThemeName %>"  Property="navigationItems" Level="1" ShowHeaderFooterOnNone="false">  
          <DisplayConditions><CSControl:CustomCondition CustomResult="<%# !IsOneBarNavigation() %>" runat="server" /></DisplayConditions>
          <NoneTemplate></NoneTemplate>
          <HeaderTemplate>
              <div id="ChildGroupListContainer">
                  <div class="navigation-list-header"></div>
                  <ul class="navigation-list child">
          </HeaderTemplate>
              <ItemTemplate><CSControl:CSLinkData runat="server" CssClass="navigation-item entry" Tag="Li" LinkTo="Link" Property="Text" /></ItemTemplate>
              <FooterTemplate>
                  </ul>
                  <div class="navigation-list-footer"></div>
              </div>
          </FooterTemplate>
      </CSControl:NavigationList>

       

    3. Add the following into ~/themes/fiji/theme.config
      <propertyGroup resourceName="Navigation" resourceFile="ThemeResources.xml">
          <property id="navigationItems" resourceName="NavigationItems" resourceFile="ThemeResources.xml" dataType="Custom" descriptionResourceName="NavigationItems_Description" descriptionResourceFile="ThemeResources.xml" controlType="CommunityServer.Controls.DynamicNavigationCustomControl, CommunityServer.Controls" maximumDepth="2" />
      </propertyGroup>

       

    4. Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/settings/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control.
      function ContentFragments_Update(cfConfigurationData) {
          if (cfConfigurationData != null && _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId) {
              var cfState = document.getElementById('ContentFragments_' + _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId);
              if (cfState)
                  cfState.value = cfState.value.split(':')[0] + ':' + cfConfigurationData;
          }

         _contentFragments_currentContentFragmentId = null;
      }     

    You can now specify your navigation through the Fiji theme configuration - you can specify up to two levels of depth.  If you enable the "Only Show One Level of Navigation" option, the second level will never be shown.

  • Alex - thanks for that. Can I therefore ask (or presume) a few questions (positions):

    1. The current CS (five) 5 release is really only suitable for those Communities oriented around Groups.
    2. I cannot find a way to move from Applications (forums, blogs, media, articles) at the root of a site to Groups without either completely losing navigation to those applications or losing a clear view of site activity?
    3. If I do organize a nested structure of Groups activity from sub-groups doesn't seem visible upon a parent (or grand-parent) group. Therefore action in a Forum/Blog/Wiki in Georgia is never logged in North America activity.
    4. Will the option to revert to traditional Navigation - and the standard Control Panel method of customization - be additive to CS (five) 5 Service Pack 1?

    Hope you can help solve some of these head-scratchers.

    Nick

  • Nick-- A few quick responses to your questions above:

    Is Telligent Community 5 only suitable for Communities oriented around groups?  I'd argue no--although there's no doubt that the default Fiji theme is oriented primarily around topic/group-based navigation rather than application navigation, I'd argue that there aren't very many communities that aren't focused around a set of topics.  I think what we've seen in the past was more topic-based forums and general sitewide instances of blogs, galleries, and wikis.  Unless you just have a completely flat small site with just a single forum/topic-area, most sites will benefit from a navigation based on the way most end-users think:  around topics they want to talk about rather than the correct "application" to interact with.
    Now, I don't pretend that group-based navigation can't be improved.  One small step that we want to take is the ability to set a default application per group.  Let's say that you have a group that's 99% forums conversations.  Why make your users go to the group landing page first before moving to the forums?  We could just have the "default" page for that group be the forum landing page instead.  When you start thinking about the flexibility just that small change offers people, I think that we'll have a product that more easily adapts to the vast array of different communities running on Telligent's platform.
    Will we have the old navigation built into the Service Pack?  No, we will not, although we are adding a new, simplified version of the Fiji navigation bar that should be vastly less confusing for everybody.  It will be a single bar across the top of the page that displays the top-level groups with dropdowns that show the subgroups of the selected top-level group.  We also know that we need to add support to add custom links to *any* navigation.  I do not know at this time whether that is going to be a service pack fix or a 5.1 feature.
    Hope that this helps somewhat.
  • With your other questions

     

    2. Can you run the following two queries against your database for me after moving applications.  Do you get any results for either query?

     

    Select NodeId, SectionID, Name, ApplicationType, ApplicationKey from cs_sections

    where NodeId not in (select NodeId from cs_Nodes)

     

     

    Select g.Name as NodeGroupName, (Select g2.Name from cs_Groups g2 where g2.GroupID = s.GroupID) as SectionGroupName, (Select t.ApplicationName from cs_ApplicationType t where t.ApplicationType = s.ApplicationType) as ApplicationType,  s.Name, s.SectionID, s.ApplicationKey

    From

     cs_Sections s

     join cs_Nodes n on s.NodeId = n.NodeId

     join cs_Groups g on n.ParentNodeId = g.NodeId

    Where g.GroupID <> (Select g2.GroupID from cs_Groups g2 where g2.GroupID = s.GroupID)

     

    3. By default this option is enabled for any groups created during an upgrade from CS2008.x but not for new groups made with TC5.  Unfortunantly this option is not exposed in the UI, but you can change it by updating the IncludeChildrenInActivityStreams column in cs_Groups.  

     

     

    Alex Crome

    o: + 44 203 178 3010

    telligent.com

     

    From: Nick Harrington [mailto:bounce-Nick_Harrington@communities.telligent.com]
    Sent: 16 July 2009 15:04
    To: features_community@communities.telligent.com
    Subject: Re: [Features and Functionality - Telligent Community] What happened to the abililty to edit the sites navigation

     

    Alex - thanks for that. Can I therefore ask (or presume) a few questions (positions):

    1. The current CS (five) 5 release is really only suitable for those Communities oriented around Groups.
    2. I cannot find a way to move from Applications (forums, blogs, media, articles) at the root of a site to Groups without either completely losing navigation to those applications or losing a clear view of site activity?
    3. If I do organize a nested structure of Groups activity from sub-groups doesn't seem visible upon a parent (or grand-parent) group. Therefore action in a Forum/Blog/Wiki in Georgia is never logged in North America activity.
    4. Will the option to revert to traditional Navigation - and the standard Control Panel method of customization - be additive to CS (five) 5 Service Pack 1?

    Hope you can help solve some of these head-scratchers.

    Nick


  • Scrap my previous response for your third question.

    If you go to a group homepage and configure the Activity Message List widget, there's an option to include activity from child groups.

  • I tried this out and had no problem getting the old style navigation back!! Thanks Alex!

    The only change that I could see that needs to be made to the instructions are as follows:

    "Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control."

    should read

    "Add the following into the <script> block at the top of /controlpanel/Settings/themeconfiguration.aspx - this is to work around an issue with the Dynamic Navigation Configuration Control."

    notice the addition of settings in the path, other than that it worked like a charm!