FYI - now that I have access to CSS again, I seem to have all horizontal issues taken care of. Things seem to be working correctly in admin, public, and member views. The "wheel" for renaming and moving pages is working great. Still pending the friendly url's to make the horizontal sub-menus work, but am not anticipating any problems there. (Right now they kick you back to the existing site.)
Sub-menus from the first level are set up two ways. For the public pages, we simply ran a 2nd "manual" table under the first menu, with the sub-menu choices. This sub-menu appears on each of the pages, so it is easy to tell where you are and move around between the choices. It does not self-adjust, but there are not many pages involved if it has to be updated.
For the members areas pages, almost everything is accessed from a link off a public page. These links are in the form of indexes and give the public a glimpse of the type of information that will be available to them if they join. There are a few items also listed directly on an index on the members area page.
During construction, I'm also using a site map - both to navigate within the new site before friendly url's are in place and also to cross-check against the existing site that we are indeed bringing over all of the existing pages prior to zapping that site. (It is organized logically as opposed to what is public and what is members only and probably couldn't be done by an automated system.)
If dynamic fly-outs were to be put in place, so that sub-menus could drop down from higher level menu items, I'm not sure I would be able to use them.
I could use them on the 2nd level items for the public pages - to replace or supplement the manual sub-menu table.
I would not want them in use for the 2nd level items of the members areas page because the menu levels are not deep enough and we actually have things at the 2nd level that belong at the 3rd level. (Counting members areas as level 1, looks like we need 6 levels to use a fly out menu and have it make any sense. That many levels would probably be frustrating to users and the indexes handle it in a painless manner.)
The use of links from public pages to access member only items,
The use of indexes to organize member only items,
The use of "invisible" public pages to hang some items off of while using the "members areas" page to hang other items off of
It all gets so messy that I don't see the ability for anything past the 2nd level to make much sense. And even at the 2nd level in the members areas, it is too messy to be of use since we really have level 3 items at level 2.
So, my take on the matter at the moment - this is a low priority item. Once you get familiar with CSS, and you read the notes WA has provided, it is easy to make a site horizontal. But organizing the site is still the big issue. WA gives so many options to mix up public and private data that it becomes really hard to take full advantage of that and still make dynamic fly outs that make sense.
My vote will be going to polling/voting enhancements over this. I can't take my previous vote off, so I lowered it to a 1.