Customizing the Left Menu

Last modified: 4/4/2026

Customizing the Left Menu

GeoHazardWatch displays a left-side navigation menu on every page. By default it shows the built-in LeftMenu page. You can replace it with your own content by creating — or editing — a page named left-menu-content.

How it works

On every page load, GeoHazardWatch looks for a page with the exact title left-menu-content. If that page exists, it is rendered as the left menu instead of LeftMenu. If it does not exist, the default LeftMenu is used as a fallback.

This means you get full control of the left menu without modifying the built-in LeftMenu page, and your customization survives product upgrades automatically.

The page may already exist

An add-on installed on this site may have already created a left-menu-content page. When you navigate to /edit/left-menu-content and the system says "this page already exists — do you want to edit it?", that is expected. Choose Edit to open and modify the existing page.

Add-on seed pages are written only once, on first boot. Your edits are never overwritten.

Creating or editing your left menu

  1. Navigate to /edit/left-menu-content (you must be an administrator).
  2. If the page already exists the site will offer to open it for editing — accept.
  3. Write your menu content using normal markup — links, lists, headings, and plugins all work.
  4. Save the page. The new left menu appears immediately on all pages.

A simple example:

[Main Page]
[Recent Changes]
----
!! My Section
* [Page One]
* [Page Two]

Important — keep it a regular page

The left-menu-content page is site-specific. It must remain a plain page:

If it were treated as a required page it could be overwritten during a product sync, erasing your customization. Keeping it as a regular page in data/pages/ means it is never touched by the Required Pages Sync tool.

Editing later

To change the left menu, edit the left-menu-content page at /edit/left-menu-content. Deleting the page restores the default LeftMenu automatically.

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