Creating a link via SiteBuilder to my phpBB forum

[Puppeteer]

I am creating a new site with SiteBuilder Pro, and I am about to add a phpBB forum in its own directory. I'd like to place a link to the forum in the menu of my website - so I'll have (using the default names) Home | Product Gallery | News Gallery | Forum | Contact Us.

Is this possible? Which style do I need to change (I suspect Home Page and Single Level Menu - possibly Two Level Menu as well) and what exactly do I need to do? I can't seem to make any manual changes to what's listed along that menu bar.

[Puppeteer]

I created a ticket for this request, and have my answer. Thanks Sava!

For anyone else who wants to do this, it cannot be done from within SiteBuilder - here is the most useful part of the response:

You will need to publish your site first. Once you have done so, you should edit the html file containing the menu items. It is located in the _mgxroot subfolder of your public_html.

I haven't yet determined the name of the "html file containing the menu items" but I suspect it'll be pretty self-evident when I get to that stage. I also imagine any further changes within SiteBuilder (especially to the menu) might require re-editing afterwards. But it gets me what I want :)

[Puppeteer]

ah well, I've published my site, and there's nothing in _mgxroot apart from image files.

I've looked through the files that are published, and there's no single html file containing menu items - the menu is set up on each and every page, and it's incredibly large, cumbersome and ugly!

I have a funny feeling if I'm going to have to change the menu on every page, every time I add something new to the site, I'm going to be ditching SiteBuilder very quickly and just do it all manually. I've also run across a couple of bugs in SiteBuilder that make me think I'll have to fiddle with things after publishing anyway.

If anyone knows of a way to change the menus once and have it propagate to all pages, I'm all ears :)

[Val]

Would it be possible to post your domain name here so I can check the template you are using and see if it is possible to change the menu section easily. Generally, you are right -- once an update is made and the site republished all files are wiped and are replaced by the new files SiteBuilder generates. It might however be possible to hardcode the change into the tempalte, but I need to see it in 'action' first.

[Puppeteer]

Hi Val, sure.

My dev site is published at www.puppetrygames.com/dev - most of the pages there still have the template content.

It looks to me that, rather than using #include to add the header and menu files, those things are duplicated on every page.

I've tried to modify the menu within SiteBuilder without any luck.

Not a big deal at this point if we can't get it working. I've already started to rebuild all the pages by hand. Bit of a pity though, because I upgraded to Pro for the ability to customize the CSS and it looks like I won't be using it at all.

[Puppeteer]

I've actually given up on this one, and am recreating my site manually.

When my site was published by SiteBuilder, the menu layout was contained in EVERY file, and I had no intentions of going through and changing every file, every time I added some new content and republished. I don't believe there's any other way to make the change I wanted.

I don't know if all the templates give the same results, or if some of them use #include tags, which would have made this so much easier. Sitebuilder is great for getting something up quickly that looks nice, and Pro for tinkering with the images and layouts, but they're not good at all if you have to do some manual tweaking afterwards.

[Dimo]

Indeed, SiteBuilder is suitable for creating simple websites.

If you need something more complex, a CMS application like Joomla or Drupal is recommended.

[Puppeteer]

lol - I don't suppose I could get a refund on the Pro version, since it doesn't meet my needs?

[yanislav]

Actually, there is a work-around for the SiteBuilder restriction to create own links for the main menu items. You can create a menu item, named Forum with any content in the page, then click on it in SiteBuilder, click on the Edit JavaScript tab and insert the following code:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
window.location = "http://yourdomain.tld/forum_installation_folder"
//-->
* disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word ** disabled word *

This script will redirect you automatically to the forum URL. I hope it will be useful for you :)

[Puppeteer]

I'll try that out someday when I have a little more time. Are you saying if I create something with a type of Menu Item, that it will automatically be included in the menus that Sitebuilder maintains and adds to with each new page that I create?

I've actually gone down the path of php scripting (talk about a crash course!) and have found that it will do everything I need and more, so I won't be going back to SiteBuilder. But hopefully your response will help anyone else who has a similar problem.