Customizing your gallery’s menu

How can you customize your gallery's menu bar, modify the tree structure and add new menu items? We will explain everything in this article.

Presentation of Piwigo's default menu

All galleries are created with the same browsing menu by default. What we call the menu means the links displayed in the strip at the top of all pages in the gallery.

With the previous examples, you will notice:

• that the menu items displayed are not the same depending on the theme used in your gallery;
• that the menu isn't the same depending on whether or not we are logged in as a user.

Some menu items open a list with sub-menus:

• The Albums link shows the list of albums with the number of photos it contains for each of them.
• The "Related tags" menu shows the tag list and lets you search for a photo by tag.
• The Explore menu (on Modus) or Discover (on Bootstrap Darkroom) lists many sub-menus.

Customizing the menu: basic options

To customize the browsing menu in your gallery, go to the administration, in the Configuration > Menus menu.

This page lets you view the links in the menu, reorganize them, and hide some of them.

It is important to understand what each line on this page corresponds to:

• The "Specials" line corresponds to a list of links available when clicking in the "Explore" menu item on Modus and "Discover" on Bootstrap Darkroom. The "special" pages are the following:
• My favorites (for users who are logged in)
• Most visited
• Best rated
• Recent photos
• Recent albums
• Random photos
• Calendar

• The "Menu" line corresponds to another list of links available when clicking on the "Explore" menu item on Modus and "Discover" on Bootstrap Darkroom. The "Menu" block contains the following links:
• Tags
• Search
• Comments
• Notifications
• The "Related albums" line is only displayed on a photo page
• The "Links" line corresponds to external links that can be added in Piwigo's configuration (with LocalFile Editor if you are using a self-hosted Piwigo gallery, or with the Advanced Menu Manager plugin)

To edit the display order of menu items, simply perform a "drag-and-drop" and save the settings.

You can also check "Hide" if you want to hide an element in the menu.

Customizing the menu with plugins

Multiple plugins allow you to go further in the customization of your menu.

Advanced Menu Manager: advanced menu customization

The Advanced Menu Manager plugin offers additional options for customizing your browsing menu. Once activated, go to the plugin's configuration page.

5 tabs are available to you.

“Menu management” tab

This tab, just like the menu configuration page in the administration, lets you reorganize menu items through "drag-and-drop". It also lets you edit the visibility of some menu items depending on the users:

• by user status in the left column (administrator, webmaster, visitor, guest...)
• by user group in the right column

On this same tab, by clicking on "Content for 'Menu' & 'Specials' menus", you can customize the pages displayed in the "Menu" and "Specials" blocks (see previous paragraph).

On this page, you can therefore reorganize links in these two menu blocks, but also click on the lock to set the visibility of these links by user status and by user group.

“Links” tab

This tab lets you add external links which will be inserted into the "Links" group (for example, if you want to integrate a link to your website on your gallery).

Here, you can:

• Add one or more external links
• Rename the "Links" menu item displayed in your gallery
• Edit other options

“Random picture” tab

The Advanced Menu Manager plugin adds a "A random picture" menu item to your gallery. This link lets you display a randomly chosen image when hovering the mouse over it.

In the "Random picture" tab, you can customize the title of this block in the menu, the data displayed, as well as the visibility of this block in some albums only.

"Personalized menu" tab

This tab lets you add the menu items you want in the menu.

“Album ⇒ Menu” tab

This tab lets you create menu items from an album.

This is useful if you want to showcase a specific album in the browsing menu.

RV Menu Tree: Browsing through the album tree

The RV Menu Tree plugin changes the way the "Albums" menu item works in your gallery.

It allows you to browse through the sub-album tree, which is not available by default.

See my photos: Adding a "My photos" menu

The See My Photos plugin lets you add a "My photos" menu item in the gallery, available inside the "Specials" block.

This link allows users to see all photos they imported into Piwigo themselves. This is particularly useful when using the Community plugin.

See photos by user: Adding a “Users” menu

The See photos by user lets users of the gallery easily filter photos based on the user who added them.

You can refine this plugin's settings from its configuration page in the administration:

• choosing a minimum number of photos required to start displaying a user in the gallery
• choosing the maximum number of users to display on the page
• choosing the display order for users on the page (alphabetical order, number of photos...)
• choosing the location of the page on the gallery:
• "See photos by user" menu under the "Explore" menu
• or adding a "Users" menu in the main menu, with a sub-menu corresponding to each user
• choosing the user filtering method in the gallery:
• displaying a classic user cloud
• displaying an animated and colored user cloud
• displaying a drop-down user list

We can see an example of a "Users" page below with the "Users" menu and a classic user cloud display options.

Menu Random Photo: adding a random photo

The Menu Random Photo plugin lets you add a menu item that displays a randomly chosen image in Piwigo.

This feature is also available in the Advanced Menu Manager plugin.

Menu Tags

The Menu Tags plugin adds a "Tags" menu on all pages that have no related tags.

If you activate this plugin, the "Related Tags" menu will always be displayed on an album's page (it will only display tags related to this album's photos).

But on the home page, instead of the "Related Tags" menu, we will display a "Tags" menu, which shows all the tags in your gallery, with a size that's proportional to their use rate.

Learn more about tags in your gallery

Upload 1 Menu: adding an “Add photos” menu

When the Community is activated, the Upload 1 Menu plugin lets you display the "Add photos" menu in the gallery's main menu, next to the "Explore" menu.

Article summary

• Presentation of Piwigo's default menu
• Customizing the menu: basic options
• Customizing the menu with plugins
• Advanced Menu Manager: advanced menu customization
• RV Menu Tree: Browsing through the album tree
• See my photos: Adding a "My photos" menu
• See photos by user: Adding a “Users” menu
• Menu Random Photo: adding a random photo
• Menu Tags
• Upload 1 Menu: adding an “Add photos” menu

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