Auto-populate menu item by category
 

I'm still adapting to Joomla 1.6, and although I've done some searching for this, I can't seem to find any documentation. Probably just not using the right search terms, but figured I'd ask you guys due to your experience with the joomla menu system...

I am attempting to create a main menu item called 'News', as a top-level menu item, that auto-populates a dropdown that lists all articles with a category tag of 'news'.

Basically, I'm trying to simplify the process of my client when he wants to submit a news update. I'd like him to be able to simply create the article, make sure it is assigned to the 'news' category, hit publish and be done. If he does that now, those articles will open in the main layout due to them not being assigned to a menu. Having him write/publish the article AND then go edit the menu to assign each new article to it will be a bit of a stretch due to his abilities. Quite honestly, it will be a miracle to teach him how to create an article itself, let alone menu assignment and syndicate and facebook prep.

Any suggestions? Is there a module out there you would recommend to simplify this process?

And disregard this as well. I knew of the menu>category work around, and tried it, but it didn't work....at the time of my first post anyways. Brief disconnection of my isp prevented the change from taking affect, and I didn't notice until now.

Close as human error ;]

Hi RocWorx I've been searching all over google and through the joomla admin interface and can't figure out what is the "menu>category work around". Could you share it?

Thank you very much in advance...

NiKO

very simple guys , publish the category that has those news in any menu item. those news items need to get specific menu itemid , and only way to do that is by publishing the parent category in any menu.

Neo, thank you for your reply.

I have created a menu structure
Item1
Item2

Itemsub1
Itemsub2

item3

Then went to content category manager and created category "item2" with a coupe of sub menus "Itemsub1" and "Itemsub2" and two articles "article1" and "article2"

Went back to menu manager and assigned "itemsub2" menu to "itemsub2" category hoping that it will display as
Item1
Item2

Itemsub1
Itemsub2

article1
article2

item3

Is there anything else I need to do for this to happen automatically as opposed to having assign every article to "Itemsub2" menu?

Thank you,

NiKO

you dont need to publish the articles at all in menu , only their category

I think there is a bit of confusion. That's what I have right now but articles are not showing up in the menu. Is there anything else that needs to be enabled for this to work?

Thank you for your help...

Can you please
 

Hi!
i have been trying to figure out how your suggestion works, but i can't, can you please explain more:confused:

Look at yj team blog on the Youjoomla site (under blog), that's a link to a category, containing loads of articles. If something else needs explaining, please be more specific.

Thank for the replay, but unfortunately not easy to find in the blog, i can't find any search function and there are too many blog to go thew manually..:(

so if you know the link to this article i would be thankful, ( and i am sure many others) who are searching for the same solution