This is a proposal for restructuring the way Antville handles site navigation, i.e. displaying links within a weblog for various groups of users. Here is a list of proposed changes:

1. Leave the current weblog.navigation macro as is to avoid breaking current antville.org weblogs.
2. Directly embed navigation elements that are the same for all users into the main page skin.
3. Create a new macro called "weblog.adminlinks" that only display links for contributors and admins. Points 2. and 3. solve two problems:
   • it makes it possible to separate basic site navigation from navigation links displayed only for contributors and administrators
   • it makes basic site navigation easier to customize
4. Replace the "search" link with an embedded search field (already discussed and agreed upon here)
5. Replace the "topics" link with a macro that displays an inlined list of all topics (imagine, no more links to empty topics page, and new topics would automagically appear in sidebar!)
6. Move the "polls" link to the links only displayed for contributors and admins. The reason for this is that I consider polls to be building blocks similar to images and goodies which would be displayed to ordinary users only when linked or embedded from a story or comment or skin.

Thus, the site navigation code that would be directly embedded into the main page skin would look something like this (in pseudo-macro-code, so to say):

<% weblog.link to="main" text="home" %><br />
<% weblog.topiclist %><br />
<!-- insert more static links here if you want -->
<% weblog.adminlinks %><br />

<!-- um, maybe we should write a macro 
for the search box? -->
<form action="<%this.url%>search"><input name="q"
value="<% request.q encoding="form" %>"><input
type="submit" value="search"></form>

Or what about the following Pseudo-Menu:

Home

Themen:
   Fischen
   Spazieren
   Angeln
   Jagen
   Rasenmähen

Archiv:
   Februar 2002
   März 2002
   April 2002

Suche: 
   [_________]

Manage:
   Neue Story
   Stories
   Bilder
   Polls
   Files
   Skins
   Mitglieder
   Settings

that would be generated by the following pseudo-code:

<% weblog.link to="main" text="Home" %><br />

<% weblog.topiclist prefix="Themen:" %><br />

<% weblog.monthlist prefix="Archiv:" %><br />

<% weblog.searchbox prefix="Suche:" %><br />

<% weblog.adminlinks prefix="Manage:" %><br />

Of course the real code would be more convoluted and less beautiful, but you get the idea...

well, i am definitely +1 for all of what has been written here. but wouldn't it be nice for all of us if somebody would post here a short summary of what hns and robert have been talking about to share your plans and remain open source?