DotAdmin User Guide

Types of Nav

Zone, Children and Product Navs

These three Nav types work in a similar way to eachother and are collectively known as Zone-based Navs. Zone-based Navs show links to content within a particular zone in the CMS.

Zone and Children Navs are used to show links to pages. Zone Navs can display links to pages and other zones within their Base Zone. Children Navs are like Zone Navs but take things a step further; in addition to displaying links to zones within their Base Zone, they can also show links to pages within those zones. Product Navs work in exactly the same way as Zone navs, but are used for displaying links to products in the online store.

Example of a Zone-based Nav.

Zone-based Navs are usually the most common type of Nav in use on a site, providing an easy method of displaying an index of links which is automatically kept up-to-date by the system. When a new page or product is added to a Zone, any Zone-based Navs operating on that Zone update themselves, adding a link to the new content.

Selective Navs

Selective Navs work on an “opt-in” basis, only showing links to pages which have been explicitly included in the Nav by a site author. Selective Navs provide more control than Zone-based Navs over what links are displayed, but require more work on the part of the site authors to ensure they are kept up-to-date.

Creating a Selective Nav.

As shown in the example above, Selective Navs do not have the Zone- and Content-related settings used by Zone-based Navs. The content of a Selective Nav is completely controlled by site authors, and each link which is to be displayed in a Selective Nav must be added manually at the Nav Settings tab of the Page or Product Editor.

Adding a Page to a Selective Nav.

Note that when adding a page to a Selective Nav, a specific link title, description and thumbnail image can be provided for use by that particular Nav. If no custom settings are provided, the page default values are used. This is another example of how Selective Navs provide more flexibility than Zone-based Navs, which must always use the page default settings.

Breadcrumb Trail Navs

“Breadcrumb Trails” of links are a very common device used to help visitors navigate large websites, and so the dotAdmin system includes a Nav type specifically designed for this purpose.

Example of a Breadcrumb Trail Nav.

A Breadcrumb Trail Nav shows a list of links to Zones, starting at the Home zone, and listing every Zone up to the visitor's current location. Breadcrumb Trails do not show links to pages or other content, only Zones.

Important! The Base Zone setting for a Breadcrumb Trail should always be set to the “All (User's Current Zone)” option. This is because a Breadcrumb Trail updates with each page load to show different links depending on where the visitor is currently located, so setting the Base Zone to “Home” would not be appropriate.

News Archive Navs

News Archive Navs are a special type of Zone-based Nav for displaying links to content by date. This works in a similar way to a Paging-style Nav, but instead of having a set number of links per-page, the links are divided into pages chronologically, with a separate page for each month of content.

News Archive links displayed as options in a SELECT field.

News Archive Navs, like Paging Navs, require additional template elements to generate the links to archived pages of content. Please see the News Archive Templates page for further information.

Alternate Category Suggestion Navs

Alternate Category Suggestion Navs are a special type of Nav used on product pages in the dotAdmin store. If the product being viewed is placed in more than one category of the store, then this Nav will offer links to those other categories, as a suggestion to the visitor that these categories may contains products that he or she would be interested in.

This type of Nav uses unique template elements. See the Alternate Category Nav Templates page for more information.