Cory Webb's How to Joomla!

Joomla! has a problem that you may or may not know about. It is a minor problem (or major, depending on whom you ask), and it will not really affect how your website functions.

The problem exists in how Joomla! renders menus. By default, the main element that contains the menu (in the case of a "flat list" menu, it is the "ul" element) is given an id=mainlevel. This is not a problem if you are using one menu on a page. But, if you are using multiple menus on a single page, there is a conflict.

Proper XHTML markup should not have more than one element with the same id. An id should be unique for each element that is given an id, so the browser can tell them apart for the purpose of style sheets and javascript. If you use multiple menus on the same page, you are using improper XHTML markup, and you will fail XHTML validation.

You can rest easy, though, because there is a solution. Read on to find out what it is.

The Solution

The Joomla! core development team is full of web development experts and people much smarter than I am. They anticipated this problem, and they have provided a solution.

When a menu is created in the Menu Manager, a corresponding menu module is created in the Module Manager. In the Module Manager, click on one of your menu modules, and you will see parameters. One of those parameters is the "Menu Class Suffix". Here, you can give a unique suffix to each menu that will appear on the same page.

Please note that by changing your menu's id, you will also change how it appears because your CSS file is likely set to modify the menu element with id=mainlevel. You will need to make the appropriate changes to your template css file to ensure that your menus are rendered properly. If you have any qeustions about this, please post them in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them.

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BTOS: ...

Still no relevant explanation found here on how menus are supposed to link to invisible pages

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September 30, 2006
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Still no relevant explanation found here on how menus are supposed to link to invisible pages

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. The purpose of this article was to explain how to display multiple menus without getting an id conflict.

Could you explain what you mean about "how menus are supposed to link to invisible pages"? I can try to explain it for you if I understand what you mean.

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September 30, 2006
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jorge: ...

I used to have vertical lists on my menus, but when I came to use flat lists (ul lists) it happended to appear the "id mainlevel already defined" error when xhtml validating. using the "menu class suffix" really solves this problem, and although I'm pretty sure this info is somewhere included deep inside joomla documentation I have to thank Cory for pointing it out.

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October 05, 2006
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Kevin: ... http://topsellersites.com

Thanks for the info Cory. I have a related Joomla menu question maybe you know the answer to.

The Joomla pathway (or breadcrumb, depending on who you're talking to) uses the Itemid. When I have an article residing in /section/category/ and click on the article from there, the pathway shows correctly. But if I publish it on the frontpage, it uses an Itemid of 1, killing the pathway. It just shows up as "Home."

Is there a way to have items shown on the frontpage use the Itemid of their published category (or section?) to preserve the pathway function?

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October 26, 2007
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Cory: ... http://www.howtojoomla.net

Hi Kevin, that's a great question. My website actually works that way, and I did not do anything special. I'm not sure why yours is not working that way. Is your section or category menu item a blog or a table?

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October 26, 2007
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stefano: ...

I have the same pathway problem. And my section menu item is a table, which I prefer, because the blog section doesn't allow to show the creation date in the articles list, only in the full article (unless you can suggest some workaround or hack...)

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November 20, 2007
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n1ght_: ...

Hey, guys, I was hoping you can help me with my little problem.
The thing is ... I'm trying to remove a menu when a user clicks on a certain link.
Well, see I have a forum which is bridged (SMF forum), and the wrapper displays it in a bad way.
I want to do something like this -> http://forum.joomla.org
The only thing that I can come up so far is to delete the left navigation panel completely, but I would love to save it on the other pages (if the user is not visiting the forum).
I would appreciate some help.
Thanks.

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December 27, 2007
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Sukanya Swadi: ...

I have a problem with showing menus selectively. I have a top menu that should appear on all pages and a series of left menus that appear on selecting the relevant top menu item.

I know that in the Modules Manager, it is important to select the top menu item as well as the left menu items for which the specific left menu should appear.

I had done precisely this...but surprisingly some of my menus show up fine, i.e. on selecting the relevant top menu item the specific left menu appears and remains on when clicking any of those left menu items. But out of 6 such left menus, 3 work fine while others don't. These don't show up unless I select the All option in the Modules Manager. I am foxed!!!

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July 05, 2008
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