I'm setting up a website using DNN 5.2.4.  I'm confused by the many different ways I could set up navigation links in DNN and by the fact that I cannot seem to find a "Links Module" in the module list.  So instead, let me describe this fairly common links motif...

The art designer has laid out all the pages with a series of horizontal links to subpages.  I'll pick one page in the site that has five subpages.  When you navigate to the page you see a horizontal links of all the subpages.

page1 | page2 | page3 | page4 | page5

If you click on one of these, say page3, then that page is displayed and this very same links in the same location on page3 now looks like

page1 | page2 | PAGE3 | page4 | page5

(of course these capitals are a different color on the art).

I don't know the best way to implement this in 5.2.4.  Do I put this in the skin and lock in the site structure to the skin?  Will the [LINKS] object work for this?  Should I put a Text Module where the links are and put links inside that Module?  Or should I hunt down the Links Module and use it?

Understand that six pages have the same menu and that the parent page has none selected whereas each child page has its name highlighted on the links.  I'd like to use the same thing on all six pages and have it "know" which page it is on.

Thank you.

There is a links module. If it has not been installed (and many modules are not installed by default) go to the Extensions page and click the Install Available Modules at the bottom of the page. Normally the functionality that you have described is provided by the menu(s) that are included in your skin. So, you would normally set your skin to display the modules that you want. For example, the Links module doesn't build links dynamically so that they links change depending of the page. Recently I used the NavXp module from Avatar Software. Besides funtioning as a normal menu, it also comes as a module that can be added to pages and configured like a module. You might want to take a look and they have a free version that you can use for learning and testing.

I think the easiest way to set this up would be to use the default NAV Menu that comes with DNN. It is relatively simple to setup the styling for the currently selected page in the Nav Menu.

Plus if you use the Nav menu, the links will be dynamic - meaning that, whenever you add a page to your site, the page will also be added into the Nav Menu.

You configure the Nav Menu in your skin code and skin.css.

Here's further information:
Nav Menu v2 for DotNetNuke v5

DotNetNuke Nav Menu

It's a fine line between being too automatic and being too configurable.  It's awesome if Nav 2 indicates which page is current for styling purposes.

I will certainly study up on the tutorials you provided for the Nav 2 menu.

One of the problems I have is that the artist is no programmer and wants very specific menus in very specific places.

There are a total of three different menus on one page.  None of them have submenus; but each of them basically lists the pages under a parent page (with some omissions due to artistic license).

The 'top' menu lists high level company pages.

The main menu lists company service pages.

The sub menu is specific to the service and lists several pages under each service.

I'm hoping that if I structure the website correctly I could take advantage of Nav 2 being both automatic and configurable.  I've seen your tutorial explaining how to rename ID's in the ASCX to allow three Nav 2's on one page.

Is it possible to have 'top' list all top level pages except the parent of the service pages?
Then have the main menu list all service pages?
And then configure the sub menu on each service page to list its children pages?

In programmer language, it boils down to this...

1.  Can the root page be set for Nav 2 such that it lists children and nothing else?
2.  Can certain children be excluded from the menu?
3.  If a certain page in the sub menu is current, will that retain the parent's currency status in the main menu?  In other words, any number of current children in the sub menu should retain the parent's currency in the main menu for consistency.

I know there is an exclude from menu checkbox on the Page Settings; but does that apply to Nav 2?  and if so, which menu is the page excluded from if there are multiple menus?  (I'm guessing the page will only ever be excluded in one of the menus, so this last question might be moot.)

Thank you for your support.

I think this website is properly structured in that I can drop the requirement to exclude certain pages.

I discovered that I can redirect a parent page permanently to the first child page such that the parent shows up in the menu and the child shows up in the sub-menu.  So clicking "Services" on the top menu redirects to "First Service" listed on the sub-menu.

Something else to consider is if you do not wish a page to be displayed in the menu, simply untick the "display in menu" option in the page settings. - Of course this will be set across the entire site.

It's really hard to tell quite how awesome DNN Nav v2 is given the documentation and search results out there.  So for those who follow and are learning Nav v2 I will show how I solved these questions I had above.

1.  Use ExpandDepth="1" Level="Child" in the ascx file like so (gt; and lt; omitted)

<dnn:nav runat="server" id="dnnNAVhome" providername="DNNMenuNavigationProvider">dnn:NAV runat="server" id="dnnNAVhome" ProviderName="DNNMenuNavigationProvider"
                IndicateChildren="false" ControlOrientation="Horizontal" CSSControl="homeMenu" Level="Child"
                StartTabId="83" ExpandDepth="1" PopulateNodesFromClient="false" ControlAlignment="Right"

Notice that when I moved to the portal to production I had to edit the StartTabId.  Anyone know how to make that portable?

2.  I had two menus: one that excluded two pages and one that didn't.  I used display: none in the CSS for the former.  It worked better than I'd hoped.

.headMenu .mi5
{
    display: none;
}
.headMenu .mi6
{
    display: none;
}

3.  Finally, while on a child page via a sub sub menu, I wanted the parent page's place on the sub menu to be highlighted.  This CSS used the breadcrumb facility with .subMenu .bc:

.subMenu .root
{
    color: #666;
    font: 11px Arial;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    padding: 0px 11px 0px 11px;
    border-right: 1px solid #666;
    list-style: none;
}
.subMenu .hov, .subMenu .sel, .subMenu .bc
{
    color: #93A0C6;
}
.subMenu .last
{
    border: none;
}

Very nice Nav release.  Thanks again.