Base class and drived pages load event - asp.net

Question

My aspx pages pages are drived from a base class, my base class creates the dynamic header of my website. I have a method called "genMenu" and i call in within pageLoad event of base class to create menu.
In some pages i need to override this method, however as we know page load of base class fires before the pageLoad of drived pages. So i cant really do that.
So how can i override the genMenu in aspx page and NoT fire it within base class. I know i can manually call the genMenu function in all drived pages, and not call it within pageLoad of base class, but there has to be a better way of handling it.

Answer 1

Create a virtual method called GenerateMenu or something like that, and always call it from the base page. Do the actual work there. Then your derived pages that need to intercept it can override that instead.
E.g., something like this:
// Base page
protected SomeType MenuVariable;
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.GenerateMenu();
}
protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) {
this.GetMenuVariable();
}
private void GetMenuVariable() {
// Some stuff with query string or the database
this.MenuVariable = FooBar();
}
protected virtual void GenerateMenu() {
// Generate the menu here
}
And:
// Derived page
protected override void GenerateMenu() {
// Calls from the base page Load event
// will be intercepted by this override
// Do the alternate work for this page
// here
}

Answer 2

Updated based on clarification:
In your base class, define a virtual method called AutoCallGenMenu(), which returns true by default. In your page load in the base class, check the result of that method, if it returns true, call genMenu().
In the pages you want to manually call genMenu(), override AutoCallGenMenu() to return false. Then, just manually call the method where you need it.

Answer 3

Instead of pageLoad, why don't you use pageInit or page_init to call your method, so that it occurs before page_load?
Refer to the. Net page life cycle for order of execution, you can then decide which method is best to use
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178472(v=vs.100).aspx
I may have misunderstood your question, but tou could also override your genmenu and ignore thr call to .base()