Custom sidebar/sub navigation

Question

Unfortunately I'm still struggling to get to grips with Sharepoint 2010, I've created a master page which I'm actually really happy with, and the top navigation etc works nicely with dropdowns, but the left side navigation is causing me issues.

At the moment on most pages it just has:

Libraries
- Site pages
Contact Us

That's if I'm lucky. Most pages just have no side navigation at all. Although a few random pages do have relative and sub-content listed.

I was tempted to try and add this in via Sharepoint designer (and I probably will for the right sidebar that I need to add) but then it'd be completely static and not change per page, also it'd obviously make it impossible to add items via the front end.

Any suggestions would be very welcome, thank you!

Answer 1

In SharePoint 2010, quick launch menu is displayed using AspMenu control.

In default master page this control is placed inside UIVersionedContent control and is declared as follows:

<SharePoint:AspMenu id="V4QuickLaunchMenu" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" DataSourceId="QuickLaunchSiteMap" UseSimpleRendering="true" UseSeparateCss="false" Orientation="Vertical" StaticDisplayLevels="2" MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="0" SkipLinkText="" CssClass="s4-ql" />

To find out what's wrong with the quick launch menu, you should check your master page for existance of a control with such signature (id="V4QuickLaunchMenu"), and compare its contents and position within the masterpage with the original master page file (v4.master).