On a website where the content never changes, menus are not a problem, they are created and then they are left to do their job.

If you are operating a web shop, your product details are probably stored in a flat file or a database. The same source could be used to control where on your website each product appears. You may want to highlight new products by placing them in a special area. All these things are made possible by an automatic menu system.

How Does it Work?

This page shows 2 examples of AMS in action although, to the visitor, it just appears as a normal web page but if you study the picture on the right, the areas highlighted in red show the automatic menus. These are created from individual pages stored in a 'pages' directory. All this is transparent to the visitor but it makes the life of the person in charge of your website much easier. They need less time to complete the work and therefore save you money.

See the article on Anatomy Of A Web Page for more details of how this page is actually constructed.

All this functionality is controlled from the user interface within your Content Management System giving you full control over where that product appears on your website without having to manually insert anything into individual pages. On a website with more than just a few pages, this can save you a considerable amount of time and money.