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Endless navigation menus capabilities
seotoaster has a very comprehensive list of menus options. If you have an idea of a menu system, you will be able to create it with seotoaster. Here are a few examples of what you can do:
seotoasters menus are optimized for search engines and vision-impaired browsers reading
First of all, the code used to generate seotoaster's navigation menus is simple, and w3c compliant. Search engine bots/crawlers and any browsers for vision impaired users (brail keyboards / text to speech systems) will not have any difficulties crawling through your links as the code is not cluttered by bad and un-necessary code. In addition to this, we added all the necessary information a search engine would need to index your pages properly, and for the web developpers to create astonishing styles that make the web better.
Simple rules and common sense for a better website
- Categories have a class named "category"
- Pages have a class named "page" (Not too difficult so far.. isn't it?)
- All navigation menu links have the target page's H1 tag as a link title (on-mouse hover browser pop-up)
- All images used in navigation menus also feature the target page's h1 tag as an alternative tag.
Available navigation menus out of the box
There are 4 navigation menus types in seotoaster right out of the box.
- {%main_menu} --> as the name says it, this is your main menu that will display your categories/pages list. When creating a page, you tell the system that you want this page to be in the main menu under XYZ category or simply tell the system that the page you are creating IS a category.
- {%main_menu_img}Same as above but uses the teaser text and images (You should use them!) and displays the image and text describing your page..
- {%static_menu} --> This is a one level menu frequently used for common information links such as " About us | contact us" etc etc...
- {%categories_list} --> just a list of all your categories in your website.
- {%categories_list_img} --> Same as above but uses the teaser text and images (You should use them!) and displays the image and text describing your page.. it is up to you to create the amazing design for it.
- {%pages_list} --> lists all pages within this very category
- {%pages_list_img} --> Same as above but also uses the teaser text and images for an enhanced experience for the user. You would use those 2 types of menu above in a "category" template for example, that way when somebody clicks on a category link, they see a small blab about the category, then a list of pages for this very category. Example here: http://www.seotoaster.com/how-to-use-seotoaster.html
"Featured Areas" are also menus (Floating menus).
The featured area system allows you to create "Floating menus" and throw some pages in it, then pull those pages from anywhere in the website.
Floating menus in seotoaster from seotoaster on Vimeo.
Step by step how to work with floating menus:
1) When creating or updating a page, under the template selector link, there is a link that says: "This page is featured: Not yet"... Click on it.
2) The featured area system appears, and allows you to add one of those "floating Menus". Name it the way you want, something pertinent you will recognize: Ex: "Beach homes".. click add.
3) Now check the box next to the floating menu to tell seotoaster that you want this page to be part of the "beach homes" menu.
4) Now that you have this "Beach homes" featured area (should have named this feature "Floating menus"... Darn!), you can go and edit the properties of any pages and add pages into the "Beach homes" floating menu.
5) note that when you create a page, you are not obliged to put it in a static menu or a category.. You can simply select "no menu" but add it to one of your featured areas for later retrieval.
--> How to show those pages: This is ULTRA simple, and very powerful.
1) In any page you are, go to one of you content editor.
2) go to the widgets Maker
3) the first widget is the "Featured area"
4) Here are your options explained:
--> select your Featured area: Here you should see your "Beach homes"
max results: --> Max number of pages to display.. (Maybe you do not have room to display more than 4 links out of 20 you have in "Beach home'
max characters: --> Max character to display from the teaser text of your page (located in create/edit page screen)
use image? --> I hope you also upload a nice teaser image for your pages, because you can use it here too!
random? --> If you check this box, seotoaster will randomly display the max results of pages (Let's say 4) out of the let's say 20 you have put in this menu.
here is how the widget code looks like.
{%featuredarea:Name of the featured area:max pages result:Max teaser text characters:Random or not}
If you checked the box "Use images" it will appear as {%featuredareaimg:......}
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07 Nov 2011:
Andy says:
I'd like to know how to separate the static menu with different category headers as the picture above seems to (or at least gives the effect) I have a bunting category with a list, then there is an 'other products' category and I'd like a list underneath that. I just cant figure it out...