Auto-Generated Side Menu for Weebly, perhaps with JavaScript or jQuery

Question

Has anyone developed a way to automatically generate a left menu for a Weebly site, maybe through JavaScript or jQuery? I don't really care for the moving dropdown menus and would prefer to have side menus instead. On the Weebly forums site, there is a description about how to create each one manually, but then you would need to update it every time you added a page.

Answer 1

I have come up with my own solution for this, using jQuery and CSS.

Here's the general process:

• Get the root link of the current page. If you're on a main link, then that's it, otherwise, climb the tree to the parent.

• Determine if there are any sublinks to the main parent link. If not, do nothing with a left menu.

• If there are sublinks, get those from the navigation that is already on the page.

• Create a structure to move the page contents to the right and give room for the left menu.

• Copy the sublinks into the left menu area.

The JavaScript

<script type="text/javascript">
      // You need this since Weebly uses another JavaScript library
      jQuery.noConflict();        

      function AddMenu() {

        // Find active link
        var activeLink = jQuery("#active");
        if (activeLink.length == 0) {
          activeLink = jQuery(".wsite-nav-current");
        }       

        var linkParent = activeLink;

        //find root page
        while (linkParent.parent().parent().hasClass("wsite-menu-wrap")) {
          linkParent = linkParent.parent().parent().parent();
        }

        // add menus when there are sub items to the root page -- but don't when there are no children (main page)
        if (linkParent .find("div").length > 0) {
          var contentDiv = jQuery("#wsite-content");

          //I add a table structure, which I know isn't the best, but it works well here.
          contentDiv.html("<table class='leftmenupage'><tr><td class='leftmenu'>" + linkParent.html()
                          + "</td><td class='rightcontent'>" + contentDiv.html()+ "</td></tr></table>");

          jQuery(".leftmenu div").show();
        }

        // Mark main nav link with id="active"
        var linkHref = linkParent.find("a").attr("href");
        var navLinks = jQuery("#navigation a");
        for (var i = 0; i < navLinks.length; i++) {
          if (navLinks.eq(i).attr("href") == linkHref) {
            navLinks.eq(i).parent().attr("id", "active");
          }
        }

      } 

      AddMenu();

 </script>

The CSS

ul.wsite-menu li { padding-bottom: 5px; } 

.leftmenupage { margin-left: -15px; width:850px; } 

td.leftmenu {
  width: 200px;
  white-space: nowrap;
  padding: 7px 7px;
  vertical-align: top;
  border-radius: 15px;
  background: #ddd;
  color: #333;
  padding: 12px 12px;
  min-width: 200px;
  min-height: 250px;
} 

td.leftmenu li { padding-bottom: 7px; }
td.leftmenu a {
  color: #333;
  font-size: 1.33em;
  padding: 5px 0px;
  display: block;
}
td.leftmenu a:hover {text-decoration: underline; }

td.leftmenu li a { font-size: 1em; }

td.leftmenu li{
  color: #333;
  font-size: 1em;
  padding: 2px 0px;
}
td.leftmenu li li {
  color: #333;
  font-size: 1em;
  padding: 2px 0 2px 15px;
} 

td.rightcontent {
  width: 75%;
  padding-left:25px;
  width: 650px;
}

For more detailed instructions on how to implement this, see my blog post :