Hey, that's MY system!
(Kidding . . . . in mine, it's on the right. :-) There are about a million and a half ways to do this. :-) I'll suggest the first that comes to mind.
First, you built it without Javascript. So the links to "Manage Students" by default would come to a page that has the same thing you'd find in your drop down menus, a simple page with "Add Student" and "View Student Profile." This serves two purposes: first, it works out the back end so you can verify it's all working as expected, hammering out the server side bugs without the complication of debugging JS at the same time, and more importantly depending on if you care about this or not (you should,) it allows you to use Javascript as a tool to enhance the user experience, not fail if it's not enabled.
Once it's all working, you have a page template for the administration area, and in this template you specify
<script type="text/javascript" src="admin-menus.js"></script>
In the .js file is all the stuff that assigns the menus and their respective links to the admin menus. I'll leave off there on that part, you can use Ajax or "grow your own" menus, depending on what you find easiest to learn. Likely you will only have to do one thing to the script you've developed, add ID's to the links:
<ul>
<li><a href="script.php?res=students"
id="student_link">Manage Students</a></li>
<li><a href="script.php?res=instructors"
id="student_link">Manage Teachers</a></li>
<li><a href="script.php?res=holidays"
id="student_link">Manage Holidays</a></li>
</ul>
(Depending on how you implement your menus, you may NOT need to add the ID's. You may just have to point the JS at a class or ID just the <ul> - as I said, about a million and a half ways . . . ) And what will/should happen is the Javascript will a) attach behaviors to the links, eliminating the need for inline Javascript, keeping your output clean, and b)
return false on the links. What that means is when the link is clicked, Javascript will "take over" and not allow the link to navigate to the href.
So you've just added progressive enhancement via Javascript (likely Ajax) and maintained accessibility. Zen. :-)
