silverstripe-framework/docs/en/howto/customize-cms-menu.md

How to customize the CMS Menu

Adding a administration panel

Every time you add a new extension of the [api:LeftAndMain] class to the CMS, SilverStripe will automatically create a new [api:CMSMenuItem] for it

The most popular extension of LeftAndMain is a [api:ModelAdmin] class, so for a more detailed introduction to creating new ModelAdmin interfaces, read the ModelAdmin referencee.

In this document we'll take the ProductAdmin class used in the ModelAdmin referencee and so how we can change the menu behaviour by using the static $menu_title and $menu_icon statics to provide a custom title and icon.

Defining a Custom Icon

First we'll need a custom icon. For this purpose SilverStripe uses 16x16 black-and-transparent PNG graphics. In this case we'll place the icon in mysite/images, but you are free to use any location.

:::php
class ProductAdmin extends ModelAdmin {
	// ...
	private static $menu_icon = 'mysite/images/product-icon.png'; 
}

Defining a Custom Title

The title of menu entries is configured through the $menu_title static. If its not defined, the CMS falls back to using the class name of the controller, removing the "Admin" bit at the end.

:::php
class ProductAdmin extends ModelAdmin {
	// ...
	private static $menu_title = 'My Custom Admin'; 
}

In order to localize the menu title in different languages, use the <classname>.MENUTITLE entity name, which is automatically created when running the i18n text collection.

For more information on language and translations, please refer to the i18n docs.

Adding an external link to the menu

On top of your administration windows, the menu can also have external links (e.g to external reference). In this example, we're going to add a link to Google to the menu.

First, we need to define a [api:LeftAndMainExtension] which will contain our button configuration.

:::php
<?php

class CustomLeftAndMain extends LeftAndMainExtension {

	public function init() {
		// unique identifier for this item. Will have an ID of Menu-$ID
		$id = 'LinkToGoogle';

		// your 'nice' title
		$title = 'Google';

		// the link you want to item to go to
		$link = 'http://google.com';

		// priority controls the ordering of the link in the stack. The 
		// lower the number, the lower in the list
		$priority = -2;

		// Add your own attributes onto the link. In our case, we want to
		// open the link in a new window (not the original)
		$attributes = array(
			'target' => '_blank'
		);

		CMSMenu::add_link($id, $title, $link, $priority, $attributes);
	}
}

To have the link appear, make sure you add the extension to the LeftAndMain class. For more information about configuring extensions see the DataExtension referencee.

:::php
LeftAndMain::add_extension('CustomLeftAndMain')

Related

• How to extend the CMS interface