Hello!
I've been trying to customized a template for the DDR menu, and I am running into all sorts of problems. I am not an expert coder, so I usually rely somewhat on trial and error. But with the DDR menu, even a small error appears to completely destroy the whole portal.

This is my problem -- I want a menu with icons. So I made this simple template based on the samples:

<xsl:template match="node" mode="topLevel">
                <a href="{@url}">
                         <xsl:if test="@icon">
                    <img src="{@icon}" class="rollover" alt="{@text}" />
                </xsl:if>                    
                        </a>                            
    </xsl:template>
   
This seems to work fine, but it's not very practical, as it completely hides the pages in the menu if there is no icon assigned. So I made this:

<xsl:template match="node" mode="topLevel">
 <a href="{@url}">
       <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="@icon != '' ">
          <img src="{@icon}" class="rollover" alt="{@text}" />
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
         <xsl:value-of select="@text" />
       </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
 </a>
 </xsl:template>

This is where things start to go very wrong. As soon as I put up the skin with this template and try to set the icon for a page, the site completely locks up. I am using DNN6, and I get the exact same result both locally and on my server. It's to the point where I can't bring the portal back to life. I've tried restarting the DNN install, recycling the application pool, and even restarting the server, but nothing is working. All I get on my local install is a Server Application Unavailable message or a timeout.
From what I have seen, the skin displays correctly, and the site works fine, but the second I hit update after selecting a small icon, everything stops working.

Here's another template tried with the same resulting lockup:

<xsl:template match="node" mode="topLevel">
<a>
                        <xsl:attribute name="href">
                                    <xsl:value-of select="@url"/>
                                </xsl:attribute>
                            <xsl:element name="img">
                        <xsl:attribute name="src">
                        <xsl:value-of select="@icon" />
                        </xsl:attribute>
                        <xsl:attribute name="class">
                        rollover
                        </xsl:attribute>
                        <xsl:attribute name="alt">
                        <xsl:value-of select="@text" />
                        </xsl:attribute>
                        </xsl:element>
                        </a>
</xsl:template>

I must have created and deleted over a dozen portals by now, trying to get this to work.
My first question is this - shouldn't there be some soft of safeguard in the DNN system to prevent from happening?  It seems a tiny mistake in one of my skins can render a whole site unrecoverable. Right now I have only been working on new, empty portals, but if this were to happen to a finished site, it would be a big inconvenience.

Secondly - what is wrong my code in #2 and #3 above?

Thanks,
Donald