3
News 1.3 (and newer I would guess) already has an 'custom block' with the entire topicslist.
Just switch it on in blocksadmin. (I believe its called news topics)
In my case I have it to be visible when a user is on the news page.
So the main menu is like this :
news
--submit news
--archive
and below that is the topics block with all the topics :
--topic 1
--topic 2
--topic 3
etc.
you can only remove the submit news and archive lins by editing xoops_version.php in the news directory.
remove these two lines to get rid of the archive link.
$modversion['sub'][$i]['name'] = _MI_NEWS_SMNAME2;
$modversion['sub'][$i]['url'] = "archive.php";
and these two to get rid of submit news
$modversion['sub'][$i]['name'] = _MI_NEWS_SMNAME1;
$modversion['sub'][$i]['url'] = "submit.php";
Hope this helps,
Highlander