Graham bemethavinci To be honest forget it stop worrying about xtgem-template or dummy classes it is easier if I just give you the code to add the 'active' navigation class direct.
Add this code to the end of your _footer

<script> window.onload_events = function (){ if ( document.getElementsByClassName ){ window.mark_active_navigation = function (){ var items = document.getElementsByClassName('nav'); if ( items != undefined && items != null && items [0] != undefined ){ for (h=0;h<items.length;h++){ item = items[h].childNodes; var loc = decodeURI ( document.location.pathname ).replace ( ' ', '+' ).replace ( /\/__xt.+/, '' ); for (var i = 0; i < item.length; i++){ if ( item [ i ].firstChild && item [ i ].firstChild.getAttribute && item [ i ].firstChild.getAttribute('href') == loc ){ item[i].className += ' active'; break; } } } } } window.mark_active_navigation (); } } window.onload_events (); </script>

The script will add class="active" to the element containing the current pages link in the containing element with the class 'nav' in the html below code the class will be added to the appropriate <li> element it will give a 'active' appearance to that link A basic nav-tabs bootstrap page header using this script looks like this

<nav class="navbar navbar-default"> <div class="container-fluid"> <div class="navbar-header"> <a class="navbar-brand" href="#"><img class="pull-left" src="--logo goes here--" alt="logo" /></a> </div> <ul class="nav" style="display:inline-block"> <li><a href="/">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/blog">Blog</a></li> <li><a href="/forum">Forum</a></li> </ul> </div> </nav>

see the header on http://baretest.xtgem.com