Troubleshooting SharePoint Fly-out Menus (Part 2 of 2)

In my prevous entry I demonstrated configuring SharePoint's flyout menus.  Everything I wrote was the "best case" scenario".  The focus of this entry is to address those things that will cause fly-out menus to appear to not work. 

At one of my client, they had already created a entire site structure on their MOSS 2007 Intranet site.  I configured the menu to flyout by following the same instructions in my previous post entitled "Configuring SharePoint Fly-out Menus". Yet the menu did not act as expected.  In fact, the menu was simple 2 levels, just as it was prior to my configuring them for "fly-out" menus.

Discovery Process

1. Changed Master Page to one that I knew worked correctly.  (No Impact)
2. Changed Style Sheet to one that I knew worked correctly.  (No Impact)
3. Reviewed Site Structure by selecting "Site Actions" > "Content & Structure" (More Question than answers)

Findings

1. The template used for the root site collection, when it was create was a "Publishing Template" called "Collaboration Portal".
2. All sites (except the root site collection and News) were showed in the "Content & Structure" as "Team Sites"/"Collaboration Sites"
3. By converting a "Team Site"/"Collaboration Site" to a publishing template, the menu strated showing the site structure in the form of fly-out menus.

Result

This triggered a full review of the entire site structure and each subsites defined usage. 

1. Sites meant strictly for publishing content should use one of the various "Publishing Templates" or "Enterprise Templates", which will allow the sites to show automatically in the menus.
2. Sites meant for collaboration and as team workspaces can be created using any site template.