cms navigation schema

[jtbaker]

Hi, all,

I'm starting to freelance soon and am creating a custom CMS to make setting up new sites and serving their content easier for myself. The system is to be installed on LAMP servers (PHPv4+). Currently, what I have for the system that generates the navigation for the created site (as opposed to that for the admin pages) kinda works, but I keep thinking there must be a better way of doing it. My question doesn't concern syntax so much as it concerns the schema.

For menus, essentially, MenuInstanceA of ClassMenuGenerator looks at all of the rows in the "aticles" database table and writes out the content of the row's "menu_text" field if the content of the row's "menu_ID" field correspnds to the "menu_id" menu being created by MenuInstanceA. In other words...

<?php

//for each row in "articles" table
//print "menu_text" if
//the row's "menu_id" matches
//the "menu_id" of the menu I'm creatng

?>

My purpose in doing it this way is so that I can dynamically generate the menus based on the content, as opposed to having to change the menus manually whenever I add content. This assumes that menu items will link directly to the content instead of linking only to pages that display content of type X. So, when I add a new page, I give it text and image content, select a menu for it to appear in, and create the text to be displayed in the menu (among other things).

The first problem is that if the created site grows to include many pages it could conceivably take a very long time to look at every article in the database just to print the homepage menu which might not even include any articles.

Second, I haven't quite figured out how to dynamically integrate into the same menu items form the “articles” database table with items from, say, the “products” database table (without simply printing one menu after the other).

Any advice or links to tutorials or other forums, etc. will be greatly appreciated. For the record I have trolled the web and many forums looking for the answer already.

[dyntryx]

I'm kind of confused as to why the "articles" and "products" table contain menus and why there is a menu link to every page on the site. Could you try to explain better exactly what you're doing. I'm not sure I'm comprehending this correctly, which is why I (and maybe everyone else?) can't seem to help you yet. Maybe that's why no one else has responded? I don't know, but please, if possible, clarify a bit more. I understand the general idea, just don't quite get the concept of what you're trying to accomplish and why the menus aren't in a "menu" table to make things easy.

I always feel like I sound mean when I say these things... I don't mean to be. Just to let you know, I have excellent intentions, in case this sounded like I was bashing you. I'll try to help after you explain more. See ya. :p

[jtbaker]

You're right: the attitude is overkill. A simple "can you clarify these three points?" would easily have sufficed.

I didn't state that there needed to be a menu link to every page on the site. In fact, those fields in the database can be null.

Perhaps having the menus wholly housed in a separate table is better. This is the sort of idea I was seeking.

Does anyone have an example of what a cms menu table could look like in case there's a useful field of which I'm not immediately cognizant.

Thank you.

[jtbaker]

Does anyone have ideas for improvements that can be made to this first draft (below) of the menu tables for a content management system?

Thank you.

menu_items

menu_item_ID (primary key)

menu_ID (notes which menu the item belongs to—
i.e., main menu, page X sub menu, etc.)

menu_text (text displayed in the menu for this item)

content_tbl (which content table the page’s content is
in—i.e., articles table, products table, etc.)

content_ID (which ID in that content table denotes the
content that is to be fed into the page)

position (position of this item within its menu)

menus

menu_ID (primary key)

menu_name

Thanks again!