Magento

Hi,

I would like to add a new menu to the backend. I would like to show my own layout when clicked on it.

I know that there is quick and dirty way, adding it on the menu.phtml file. But I don’t want to do it. Because I don’t want to maintain magento’s main code with every change I have done.

So here comes the question, how can I do it with extending core classes and creating a new module or something in local part of magento?

I have tracked the code to Mage_Adminhtml_Block_Page_Menu class, which creates a list of menu elements, from /app/code/core/Mage/Admin/etc/admin.xml

I may have to edit this file manually, which I don’t want to do this too. What I do really want to do perhaps, overwrite the core’s menu class (to tell magento to use my own menu class instead of Mage’s) and then extend a new class from the core class and modify the menu items according to a different additional_menu_items.xml file which I will define in the local module folder. Or perhaps I will add it manually to the array, but I guess an xml file will be cleaner

Then I want to show something I have previously defined (where can I define it?:) in the middle part of the admin page. I, of course, want to keep the top menu and bottom copyright part and show up a page I have created previously there?

I’m not totally sure how to do it. I really appreciate some help. No need to tell everything I have to do (but a tutorial like wiki entry would be great!) but I need some clues to do it. Like look here on how to overwrite mage core classes and look here for custom layouts etc.

thanks for your time.

I have successfully found out how to add a new link on top menu.

In my module’s etc/config.xml file I have added some files like this:

But the problem is, I was unable to set an html file to this menu. So it shows a 404 on the middle (header and footer are protected and 404 shows in the middle of them just like I wanted, cool:).

What can I do to bind a html file to this menu?

Thanks

Hi,

nearly 2 months have passed and I was able to move on just a little bit.

I found out that there were some things about controllers. I was trying to move on from dashboard example but I’m kind of lost as I cannot figure out how to call that controller or how that controller actually calls my class and other things.

Really isn’t there anyone to help me about this?

thanks

Yo dude!  I myself struggled a lot with this just a couple of months ago. Adding a completely new module can be hell, until you finally get it working . Anyhow, this should clarify a few things http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/custom_module_with_custom_database_table.

If you bump in to any problems along the way just post your questions here or send me a PM and I’ll help out as much as I can

Happy holidays ^^