Pretty Handy Tip - Creating Custom Links from the Skin.

Ever Wonder How to Create Custom Navigation/Links from your DNN-Skins?

For Instance if you have pre-defined text-links that you want to manage from the skin.

Example: Home | Sitemap | Help | Contact

One method is to define the hard-coded links associated with the appropriate tab id/tab name (ex: < a href ="/Default.aspx?tabid=36" >Home< / a >).  This requires that you have the exact tab id’s/tab name. This is not the ideal solution.

Here is the best practice method.  

A better method is to manage it via friendly URL’s by following these steps:

1. Taking the example links - Home | Sitemap | Help | Contact
2. Link your Home link to home.aspx, Sitemap to sitemap.aspx,  etc in the skin.html or skin.ascx
3. After establishing the site, modify the siteURLs.config to manage your URL’s.
   
   (Note: you can change the tab id’s of each url at any time without changing the skin.)
   
   < RewriterRule >
               < LookFor >.*/ home.aspx< / LookFor >
               < SendTo >~/Default.aspx?tabid=36< / SendTo >
   < / RewriterRule >
   < RewriterRule >
              < LookFor >.*/ sitemap.aspx< / LookFor >
              < SendTo >~/Default.aspx?tabid=74< / SendTo >
   < / RewriterRule >
   
   
4. From DNN 3.3+/4.3+ you can handle the site URL’s from your site's "Host Settings".
   1. Expand "Advanced Settings" and "Friendly URL Settings".
   2. From this point you can manage your hard coded links by adding new rules and typing in your link names, instead of going to the trouble of editing config files on your server.

Nice tip. Question.. how does this work when you have multiple portals?

Portal #1: ContactInfo page is tabid=39
Portal #2: ContactInfo page is tablid=25

< RewriterRule >
< LookFor >.*/ ContactInfo.aspx< / LookFor >
< SendTo >~/Default.aspx?tabid=39< / SendTo >
< / RewriterRule >