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For each or some of those menu items you create a couple of sub-menu items which I call level2 menu items. This will be the sub-menu that appears in the left sidebar for example after one of the level1 (horizontal top-menu) menu items is clicked.

In the Joomla! module admin you have a menu module for your level1 horizontal menu which you should edit to make it render only the 4 level1 menu items. There are some parameters on the right where you can set which level the menu should show on the front-end of the site (see image above Start Level = 0 and End Level = 1).

Now when you make a copy of that menu module and publish it on another module position, you should change those same parameters (see image above but Start Level = 1 and End Level = 2) to have the module only render and show the level2 sub-menu items for a level1 main-menu item.

What's that new feature about?

I encountered problems with the splitmenu feature and the "countModules()" template function you can use in your Joomla! templates to show or hide certain html.

The problem is that this function checks whether a module is set to be published on a position in your template file but a sub-menu module is set to always be published but it doesn't always have data to display.

When there are no level2 sub-menu items for a certain level1 main-menu item you should be able to hide the module completely so you don't end up with an empty module div or a module title without data beneath it.

After telling this problem to Sam Moffatt, one of the core coders he understood and we considered this to be a bug in the splitmenu functionality of Joomla! 1.5 that should and could be fixed.

The solution is counting children

From Joomla! 1.5.7 you will have a new function to use in your templates and the function is:

<?php if ($this->countMenuChildren()){ ?>
<div class="sidebar-left">
<jdoc:include type="modules" name="level2_menu" style="raw" />
</div>
<?php } ?>

So when you are using the splitmenu feature in your template you can now hide html based on whether a level1 menu item has children or not even if the module itself is set to be published for all menu items. This is a great improvement for template designers like myself.