getting menus to show up?

tezza,

Hang in there.

Navigate to the node (you used the word "item") that you want a menu item to refer to. Copy the URL from your browser (you don't need the base URL or the forward slash). Then go back to the administer menus add menu item screen and paste the URL you just copied into the "path" field. Make sure it is enabled in the Administer/blocks screen -- and you should be golden.

URLs for the path in a menu item could be to an individual node (like the example above) or to a collection of nodes. You can create pages that collect multiple nodes onto the same page using just about any criterion you want. The most obvious version of this is created by the system -- it is the home page which brings in any node that that has "promoted to the front page" checked in "publishing options." But usually the ability to create specific pages which gather a group of nodes is done via a particular module.

For instance, the taxonomy module allows you to create a page that collects all nodes which have a particular taxonomy term associated with them ("and" and "or" operators can be added as well example: a page that has nodes tagged with x OR y would look like: http://example.com/taxonomy/term/5 6 ). It would create a page that would bring in all nodes tagged with taxonomy term whose id = "5" or "6". You could then create an alias for that URL which would be friendlier to you and your users). The most powerful module I've used so far is the "Views" module which lets you create a page which pulls in nodes based on any criteria you want and present those nodes in any way you can imagine. Built in to the view module is a field where you generate a URL for this view you just created.

Here is an example of a page from one of my sites that pulls in nodes based on taxonomy term:
http://www4.jrf.org/development which is an alias for: http://www4.jrf.org/taxonomy/term/59

Here is one that used the Views module. I wanted to bring in all the image nodes -- and the image module had a default way to do it but I didn't like the way the image module presented them: Here is the built in path from the image_gallery module:
http://www4.jrf.org/image

Yuck -- I don't want that.

Using the Views module I had (almost) total control in creating the page I wanted:
http://www.www4.jrf.org/photos

So Drupal is powerful. I hope you get past the really unfun part.

Good luck,

Shai

http://everydayandeverynight.com/