Made copy of static social justice site and extracted the primary and secondary navbar stuff to javascript, just as a test. Created menuArray.js file which is a big lookup of all the folder and file names and all the section and subsection texts that appear in the GUI. Also created writeMenus.js which grabs the current page's URL and then writes the navbar including figuring out which elements to highlight. Got it working at http://web.uvic.ca:8080/~socjust/testjs

Pros: far less duplication of code on pages, edit one js array file
Cons: if JS disabled in browser, no navigation; have to understand structure of js array file and be careful editing (commented thoroughly in code)

Next: will do similar abstraction, but using php, which should keep the pros and eliminate the big con