Help! How to I build menus that click open to a page with content and a forum?

[Julie4321]

Help!!! I’d like to build a wordpress site (am now using Atahualpa 3.7.3) that has a left bar menu as well as a top bar menu. I’d like to be able to click on a title on either menu (such as girls aged 6-8 or boys aged 9-10) and have that pop open into a page where I can post content and links as well as have a discussion Board.

I am so confused with BuddyPress, bbpress, categories v. pages, etc. Can someone help get me started? Right now my left menu is set up as categories and the top menu as pages – each will have sub categories and sub-pages.

One more for you….I’d like to track user data – does that automatically output to a Db if I set up a login page?

THANK YOU!

[kmessinger]

I used Atahualpa but was forced to abandon it because I wanted to use bbpress. Buddy Press will work as it lives outside of your wp.

Search the CODEX for catergories and Pages. Briefly, a page is a normally static, html, etc. that does not change. Generally speaking Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. The organizational structure for Pages comes only from their hierarchical interrelationships, and not from Tags or Categories. There are, AFAIK, some plugin that may allow assignment of Categories to pages.

There are plugins for tracking as well as web tools on google.

[Julie4321]

Thanks for the help! Will consider using groups instead of categories and do via buddypress. I have seen some html adaptation to turn pages into categories…was looking to avoid as many ‘programming’ things as possible!

Under buddypress, can you have content and a forum on the same page? (I realize this is not the buddypress support forum, but if you already know the answer, I hope you don’t mind me asking).

[kmessinger]

I suppose you could run one or the other in an i-frame but I really don’t know.

[Julie4321]

Thanks again – much appreciated!

[Julie4321]

Anyone else with any ideas? Again, much appreciated!