I had an idea to put things like "Next Event", "Statistics" and "Popular Threads" in a menu item on the side instead of in the top bar, but it didn't work as expected.

I expected that I could create a new Menu, say "Next Event" and put this in the menu HTML section:


<span class=EventName><!--System:NextEventName--><br></span>
<span class=EventTime><!--System:NextEventDate--><br><!--System:NextEventTime--></span>


But it appears that the server substitution for those tags doesn't happen in the menu HTML content.

I know I could put this in the custom Layout file, but I'd rather not since the positioning I want is between two existing Menu items.

Thoughts?

To be a little clearer... I know I can do this in the Layout file, but I still want to be able to manage the menus from the admin interface, even with my custom layout file.

Does that make more sense?

Interesting ideas. Currently, you are correct in that Menus do not process the <!--System--> commands. Perhaps it's something that can be done in the future, but given that it's possible to do with the Current Advanced Layout, and that it would require a semi-significant rewrite of that functionality, it would have to be a low priority at the moment.