Consistent Top Navigation Menu across All site collections in SharePoint 2010

Consistent Top Navigation Menu across All site collections in SharePoint 2010 Requirement: Display a consistent Top Navigation Menu across multiple site collections on the same web front ends in SharePoint. We can fulfill this requirement by using custom sitemap providers in SharePoint. Here are the steps at high level Create your own sitemap file in Layouts folder Add a Site Map Provider in web.config file Add a SiteMapDataSource to your master page change the SharePoint menu's datasource to your custom SiteMapDataSource Lets start building SharePoint 2010 common navigation across site collections. 1. Create your own sitemap file in Layouts folder Modify the site map to match your navigation needs and save it with a .sitemap extension in a location accessible by your SharePoint farm. The _LAYOUTS\1033 directory is a great place since any site can get to that location (i.e. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOU