Hi Zeb,

We don't currently have page templates - it is a feature we would like to implement in the future, but I can't give you an ETA. For now, you can accomplish something similar by creating a duplicate of your skin and adjusting the layout.Master to match what you want, then when you create new pages you just select which skin should be used on that page (make sure you enable the "can set skins on pages" setting in your site settings first, though).

If you do this, you can then add a site menu control to your left pane in your new skin. You can also add the search input control in your right pane, if you'd like.

By the way, to configure the classes and settings on your left pane, I'd recommend using this in your layout master:

<portal:SiteMenu id="SideMenu1" runat="server" MenuSkinId="SideMenu" UseFlexMenu="true" />

And this in your theme.skin:

<portal:FlexMenu runat="server" SkinID="SideMenu"
    AnchorChildSelectedCssClass="child-active"
    AnchorCssClass=""
    AnchorInnerHtmlBottom=""
    AnchorInnerHtmlTop=""
    AnchorSelectedCssClass="active"
    ChildContainerCssClass=""
    ChildContainerElement=""
    ChildNodesPerUl="-1"
    ChildUlCssClass="childmenu-wrap"
    ContainerCssClass="side-menu"
    ContainerElement=""
    DescriptionCssClass="side-menu-description"
    ExtraBottomMarkup=""
    ExtraTopMarkup=""
    IsMobileSkin="false"
    ItemDepthCssPrefix=""
    LiChildSelectedCssClass=""
    LiCssClass=""
    LiSelectedCssClass=""
    MaxDataRenderDepth="-1"
    ParentLiCssClass=""
    RenderCustomClassOnAnchor="false"
    RenderCustomClassOnLi="true"
    RenderDescription="true"
    RootLevelLiCssClass="sidemenu-root"
    RootUlCssClass=""
    StartingNodeOffset="-1"
    UlChildSelectedCssClass=""
    UlSelectedCssClass=""
/>

Then just adjust the settings above in your theme.skin to your liking. The configuration above will show all menu items on the site, not just those related to the current page, and will add an "active" class to the page currently viewed, so that you can hide the children of inactive pages if you want, and add your bold font to active one or it's children.

Hope this helps!

Hi Zeb,

The best way is to do this with CSS. With the Theme.skin content I sent you, and assuming you haven't changed the display settings that control the classes or the rendering order of the menu, the following CSS should do it:

.active + .childmenu-wrap,
.child-active + .childmenu-wrap {
	display: block;
}

Essentially this is just overriding the 'display: none;' you're already using, but only for the UL immediately after an active item or an item with an active child item. Let me know how this goes. Note that setting elements to 'display: block;' as an override like this can sometimes break them if they had different default behavior. You can try 'inherit' as a value if you don't know the default display mode and you're having issues.