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Menu element

A menu element displays metadata and content from content items that match the search criteria of the menu element. The search criteria of a menu element can include matching site areas, authoring templates, categories and keywords.


Creating a menu element

You can only use a menu element by creating a menu component. You cannot add a menu element to authoring templates, site areas or content items.


Menu search options

Menu element search options are defined in the Menu Component Query section of the menu element form. These search options define which content items from your site will be displayed in the menu element. Search options can include a combination of search parameters including searches based on authoring templates, categories and site areas. Menus can search for the following in a Web site:

Menu element searches are "or" searches, not "and" searches.

This means that a menu element that searches for two different categories and an authoring template will return content items profiled with at least one of each profile type (one category and one authoring template), not just content items that match all of the parameters. Content that matches only one profile type (authoring template only or category only) are not returned.

You cannot use taxonomies in menu element searches. To search for content items profiled with any category in a taxonomy, you should create a single top-level category under a taxonomy, and nest all other categories below the top-level category. Select the top-level category in the menu elements search parameters.


Menu sorting options

You can sort menu search results according to following criteria:


Menu paging options

IBM Lotus Web Content Management provides flexible paging options to enable you to display search results are generated by the menu element.

While a page navigation element is a convenient way of displaying and navigating a menu's search results, you can use the menu's paging options to display search results in other ways.

For example, if you wanted to show the results in a 3-column table, you could create three menu elements with the same search criteria and then tailor the paging options of each menu to display different result sets:


Table 1. Example

Menu Results per page Start page Records displayed
Menu element 1 5 1 1 to 5
Menu element 2 5 2 6 to 10
Menu element 3 5 3 11 to 15

The three menus could then be referenced within three different cells of a table row in a presentation template.


Parent topic:

Creating links


Related tasks


Use a menu element