The Insert Left Menu Tag Plugin provides a setting by which you can make the Wiki use another Wiki page for the left menu than the default one (by default, the page “LeftMenu” is used for the left menu).

The usage description is also available in German, see InsertLeftMenuTag Benutzung.
Eine deutsche Benutzungsbeschreibung siehe auf InsertLeftMenuTag Benutzung.

1. Get the DynamicLeftMenu.jar file that I have attached and copy it into the respective ../WEB-INF/lib/ folder. It contains the compiled class.
2. Adjust the tag-library jspwiki.tld in the ../WEB-INF/ folder. Add the following lines: [1]
3. Goto the Favorites.jsp (or LeftMenu.jsp) template file, this usually contains the tag that renders the left menu. Replace <wiki:InsertPage page="LeftMenu" /> by <wiki:DynamicLeftMenu />. Remember, the <wiki:InsertPage page="LeftMenu" /> tag could be in a different jsp page, depending on the template you use.
4. Restart your servlet engine.
5. Edit the page where you would like to have a different left menu rather than LeftMenu.txt. Add the following line: [2] This sets the leftmenu variable to LeftMenuServices, hence the file LeftMenuServices will be used for the left menu.

[#1]

  <tag>
      <name>DynamicLeftMenu</name>
      <tagclass>net.killeri.jspwiki.InsertLeftMenuTag</tagclass>
      <bodycontent>empty</bodycontent>
      <attribute>
          <name>page</name>
      </attribute>
  </tag>

[#2]

[{SET leftmenu=LeftMenuServices}]

Just added MarkupParser.cleanLink() call, so that whitespaces or other symbols that must not be in a WikiPage name are removed from the leftmenu variable.

--Candid Dauth, 16-Aug-2006

what's the purpose of this plugin?

--n72j9, 23-May-2007

We have added this plugin and made it available for teachers to customize their own left menu:

Default left menu

Blank left menu Example of blank left menu that teachers may customize with small picture links, wiki page links, web page links, etc...

We are using Favorites.jsp, Tomcat 5.5, and JSPWiki v2.4.56
It works great and does not a server resource hog.

Thanks you for adding this. -- misovec, 14-July-2007