Drupal breadcrumbs

Created by janroe

Modules: 
http://drupal.org/project/menu_breadcrumb 6.x-1.3 on 6.25 
http://drupal.org/project/menutrails 6.x-1.1 on 6.25 
http://drupal.org/project/custom_breadcrumbs 6.x-2.0-rc1 on 6.25 
http://drupal.org/project/disable_breadcrumbs This is also related to http://www.janroe.com/node/162 To sum it up, it should actually be fun to make sure a site has consistent and user-friendly breadcrumbs. In reality it's quite a technical headache. Things to do before activating breadcrumbs on this specific site:

  • change content type blog to something standard. the blog type breadcrumb is meaningless
  • find a way to have menu headings that are headings in blocks behave as a breadrumb item
  • OR any other way to keep the menu blocks menu structure on this site and have it show in a bread crumb (I've not been able to make taxonomy do it > how to/ experiment with views?).

On other sites that have a more traditional primary/secondary links menu structure this can be made to work, while some issues still remain. Modules:

Menu Breadcrumb

  • Set to Have breadcrumbs follow menu items
  • Set to Append page title to breadcrumb
  • Set to Appended page title as an URL
  • Set to Hide the breadcrumb if the breadcrumb only contains a (Home) link to the front page
  • Enable/disable Menus

Menu Trails

  • Set the default menu to use
  • Set a menu parent per node type - i.e. Forum Topic => Forum
  • Set a menu parent per vocabulary terms

This works well to keep the menu highlighted to show the active trail, plus it can create a menu generated breadcrumb. Taxonomy trails are also included. Note: Menu Trails does not show up in my contributed "Administration menu" (the menu on the top). One workaround is .../admin/by-module and/or adding it manually to the Admin menu.

Disable Breadcrumbs

  • Select Content types that Disable breadcrumbs can be used on: => per selected content type, this adds a breadcrumb item "hide: yes no" to the individual node options
  • Select Content types that you want to have an option to disable disable all breadcrumbs => this en/disables breadcrumbs for all nodes of a content type in one go
  • Set to Disable ALL breadcrumbs => remove them all

Super. That works well. Basically I have achieved my goal to have breadcrumbs only for Forum and for Ubercart. EXCEPT for that darned, troublesome contact page. It's not a Content type. So just to get rid of the breadcrumb "Home" there, I'd have to install the Menu Breadcrumb module, with one option enabled, hide "Home".

Comparison

Menu Trails mainly works to highlight the active menu trail, including for taxonomy terms (catalogue, forum), while it also generates a proper breadcrumb. Menu Breadcrumb can fashion breadcrumbs according to menu structure. It can also remove the Home (only) breadcrumb. If Home breadcrumb is disabled, all "flat" structured content plus the Contact page lose their unneeded breadcrumb. So, Disable Breadcrumbs can disable for complete content types or selective nodes belonging to content types. It can't remove the Contact page breadcrumb. For impact on performance, it appears to me that Disable Breadcrumbs is somewhat lighter than Menu Breadcrumb (but can't find a source for that). But these modules can also be used together.

Other

On my site here I'm using standard top level menus that are activated as blocks (elemental, personal, philo...). Apparently it's not possible to have a block title as the parent of menu items, this way: Home > personal > about Home > drupal > drupal notes > breadcrumbs Objectively these are the correct and user-friendly breadcrumbs, even if "personal" and "drupal" here are not URLs. Apparently not possible. Adding taxonomy does not help. There my be some other fix... http://drupal.org/node/1372726 (D7 only and must be URLs) I could delete all those top level menus and remake them inside a single top menu but then I'd lose the blocks (elemental, personal, philo...). In this specific case, I really like to keep them. Blogs appear to have a very different menu behaviour from other content types. Plus the trail: Home > Blog > Z's blog is really pretty meaningless. I'll need to change the node type for this go away. One thing about a navigational aid like a breadcrumb is that it must be consistent. With all I decided to disable breadcrumbs on this site, even though they could have been a nice navigational tool at the top of the page.

Interference

Other sources say that various breadcrumb modules can be used together. I am doing this too. But there may be interference: If in Menu breadcrumb module you check-mark "Append page title to breadcrumb", while not check-marking "Appended page title as an URL" you get the unlinked current page menu title into the breadcrumb, as intended. If subsequently you enable the Menu trails module, with check-marked "Set breadcrumbs?", some of those unlinked title become linked, unintended... I'm finally not using Custom Breadcrumbs, because I could not figure out how to disable breadcrumbs on certain sections. It looks like a good module when you have more advanced coding background.

Wrong multilanguage taxonomy breadrumb

No breadcrumb module is used. Baffling issue with Breadcrumbs and multilanguage: English - site.tld/node/15 (default language): Home → Forums → Participants → Events home > forum > forum/1 > forum/3 Dutch - site.tld/nl/node/16 (translation): Home → Fora → Evenementen → Evenementen home > forum > forum/1 > forum/3 The second language is getting the breadcrumb title wrong. "Evenementen" is doubled up. The first "Evenementen" is wrong and should read "Deelnemers" (english: Participants). The second "Evenementen" is correct (english: Events). Translations are done correctly by string translation. Internationalisation by localised terms. The term in question, the first "Evenementen" that should actually be "Deelnemers" is a forum container. It's getting the name/title from the wrong place. At the same time, the url's are correct. It shouldn't be possible for it to be doing this. This is a forum, therefore these are taxonomy terms. Wrong multilanguage taxonomy breadcrumb titles? Maybe this: http://greenash.net.au/thoughts/2005/02/basic-breadcrumbs-and-taxonomy/ Has anyone come across this kind of thing before? It really doesn't look good and I'd like to fix it...