Where are the MenuMachine 2 support files stored? (MM2)
Article Applies To:
MenuMachine 2 only
GoLive CS, CS2
Mac, Windows
Article ID: 000131
Category: General Issues
Issue
Where does MenuMachine 2 store the support files for a menu?
What files need to be uploaded?
Solution
MenuMachine 2 support files are saved in a folder at the root level in a GoLive site.
When you create the first menu in a site, MenuMachine 2 automatically creates a folder called menumachine at the root level of your site.
You can see in the Site Window below that the menumachine folder is at the top level of the site (the root level) which is also where the home page (index.html) is located.
If you open the menumachine folder (see image below), you can see a readme file called about_this_folder.html. You can open this file in GoLive to read about the menu support files in the menumachine folder.
For this example, a menu called Company Menu was created. You can see a folder called company_menu in the menumachine folder. The company_menu folder contains the files which relate to the menu called Company Menu. If you created a second menu called Sidebar Menu, a new folder called sidebar_menu would appear alongside company_menu in the menumachine folder.
Why is the menu's folder name different to the name of the menu?
When you create a name for a MenuMachine 2 menu in the Menu Editor, you can use spaces and other non alpha-numeric characters. When MenuMachine 2 saves the data for your customized menus, it strips out spaces and replaces them with underscores (_). It also replaces capital letters with lowercase characters.
This is to ensure that your folders and files do not use illegal characters which may cause the menu to fail when the menu support files are uploaded to a web server. Do not change the names of any folders or files inside the menumachine folder.
In the Site Window image below, the company_menu folder has been opened so you can see the files inside. These files are for this specific menu. The menuspecs.js file contains the all the settings you applied to this menu when you edited it in the Menu Editor. When you edit a menu, its menuspecs.js file gets updated. Each menu has its own menuspecs.js file.
What files need to be uploaded?
When you first publish your site, upload the whole menumachine folder. This will ensure that all the files required for the menu to work online will be on the server.
You must upload the menumachine folder to the root level on your server. (This is usually the same place you where you have uploaded the home page of the site. If you use GoLive's FTP to upload your site, it should be uploaded correctly.)
If you edit a menu in the Menu Editor, you may only need to upload that menu's menuspecs.js file. This will depend on what you edited. If you changed any images in the menu, you need to also upload those. To be safe, re-upload the menu's folder or the whole menumachine folder.
If you are only uploading some of the contents of the menumachine folder, make sure they are uploaded to the correct position on the server.
If you edited any page-specific attributes such as the menu's Z-Index, Highlighting, Actions or Frame settings, you need to re-upload the page in which those changes were made.
If you do not see your changes online immediatley, make sure you force-refresh to clear your browser's cache (or empty the cache and re-load the page).
If you have updated your version of MenuMachine 2, you will see a message when you open your site which will remind you to re-upload the menu support files for the site. In this case you should re-upload the whole menumachine folder.
Important: Do not move or change the name of any files or folders which MenuMachine creates.
Last updated: September 3, 2006
This article has been viewed 6296 times.