Tabs & Vertical Menus

[fluffy82]

Hi all,

I am a fairly new user to TNG (having it installed less than a month ago) and I have only a basic knowledge of website building - mainly in Dreamweaver. I don't know if my question will have an easy answer, nor if it has an answer at all...

Since some time, I've wanted to make my very own site about my family tree. I had (and still have) a very clear and specific idea of how it should look. As TNG already has many of the scripts I would need, and it would take a very long time for me to write them myself, I thought the easiest way was installing TNG, starting off from one of the templates and modify it into something I like. The upside is that the administrator section is a fantastic help to keep the tree updated and organized, now I've seen it I absolutely want to keep it.

I have been able to implement many of the things I want, except two.

1) the menu bar(s)

I successfully encoded the site so that the "separate bar" containing the drop down menus are shown in the bar in the header, next to "Dad's side", "Mom's side" and "Contact". I just need to figure out how to get the icons there as well, but that will work.

Now, what I want as well is a vertical menu on the left side of every page.

With the risk of making the text too long, I'll try to quickly explain:

- the horizontal top menu contains most of the links already provided standard

- what I want to do is add a couple of links there; in this example I will say "family tree"

- clicking there, you get a "title" on the left hand vertical menu, with some submenus (pedigree, families, people...)

- those submenus can be subdivised further via an accordion menu: for example, clicking on "families" you will get a subdivision of 4 or 8 of the most important families in my tree, clicking on either of the names, will reveal 3 links to pages: name etymologie, family history, descendancy of the eldest forefather

If I would have made the site from zero, I would include the horizontal menu in the template, and make separate pages/templates for each of the pages that uses a different sidebar.

Now the question: what is the best way to do it, without changing too much of the TNG codes? Add a vertical menu in each php page? Is this at all possible? Or make html pages like I want them, with a window "echo'ing" the existing php page (for which I'll need to take out the references to the header in each php)?

I hope it is clear, don't hesitate to ask me if it is difficult to understand what I mean

2) the tabs

Linked to the previous problem: I don't want the pedigree, descendants etc of each individual on one page with tabs. I prefer to have them in different pages. What is the easiest way to abandon the tabs?

The idea is, in a way, to center everything around a "person page" but with links rather than tabs.

I'd like to have a page with all the details of a person, with a link to his pedigree, and a link to his descendancy etc.

In attachment a pdf with a general idea of what I'd want it to look like...

Thanks in advance for any hints you could give me!

Tom

family_tree.pdf