Best practice

Breadcrumb Navigation With Render Tags

Taming the beast that Open Text so frankly called ‘Web Solutions Management Server’ we have some pretty nice tools available since version 7.1. Render Tags are a quick and effective way to create navigation elements like this breadcrumb navigation below.

    
        
            
<%!! Context:CurrentIndex.Headline !!%>

                <% currentDepth = <%!! Context:CurrentDepth !!%> %>
            
        
        
            
                
                    
<a class="first" href="<%!! Context:CurrentIndex.GetUrl() !!%>"
                            title="<%!! Context:CurrentIndex.Headline !!%>"><%!! Context:CurrentIndex.Headline !!%></a> / 

                        
                    
                
                
                    
<a href="<%!! Context:CurrentIndex.GetUrl() !!%>" title="<%!! Context:CurrentIndex.Headline !!%>">
                            <%!! Context:CurrentIndex.Headline !!%></a> / 

                        
                    
                
            
        
    

A pretty nice piece of code. It creates a breadcrumb navigation with several CSS class names, giving you many options to style the whole thing very detailed.

Embed this in your project

1. Put it in a separate template
2. Create a container (for example ‘con_breadcrumb’) in your MasterPage(s)
3. Create ONE instance of the breadcrumb template in the container inside the homepage template (you don’t need to place the container in the HTML of your homepage it’s just a good place to store unique project wide pages)
4. Reference the ‘con_breadcrumb’ container in your homepage page to all MasterPage templates (and if required to all already exisiting pages – thankfully there is a plugin available from Open Text for this, just ask them!)

Done.

Credits

I asked Neil Fegen, if I can use his enhanced version of the script from Ingo Hillebrand who came up with it last Friday on the RedDot Google Group. Thank you guys for sharing this stuff with us!

Related posts:

1. Render Tag CheatSheet – #1 Basics
2. Duplicate content publishing – SEO and Open Text Web Solutions
3. RSS Feed tutorial template in PHP for RedDot CMS
4. 5 Template Tips – How to use HTML and CSS within RedDot CMS – Best practice for RedDot Consultants
5. Export RedDot CMS content to Excel

About the author:

Markus Giesen is a Solutions Architect and RedDot CMS Consultant, formerly based in the south of Germany. Travelling around the world to find and offer solutions for a better world (in a very web based meaning). He just found a way to do this as part of a Melbourne based web agency. On this blog Markus shares his personal thoughts on CMS and web development. In his freetime you will find him reading, snowboarding or travelling. You should follow him on Twitter!

Tags: base page templates, Breadcrumb, CMS, css, Render Tags, Tricks