Navigation

A navigation is a menu: the main one across the top, the one in the footer, a sidebar. Which ones exist is part of the site’s setup, so if you need a new one that is a small change for whoever builds the site.

Find them under Navigation in the sidebar.

Building one

A navigation is a tree you arrange by dragging. Drag an item onto another to nest it; drag it out to promote it. Depth may be limited — a menu that only has room for two levels will say so.

Each item is one of two things:

• A link to an entry. Choose the page from a picker.
• A link to a URL you type. For anything outside the site, or a page that does not exist as an entry.

Items can have fields of their own if the site defines them — an icon, a short description for a mega menu, a “open in a new tab” switch.

Why link to an entry rather than a URL

Because the link follows the page. If someone changes that page’s slug, or moves it under another page, the menu is still correct. A URL you typed is a URL you will have to remember to fix.

Use a typed URL for external links and genuinely fixed addresses; use an entry for everything on your own site.

Where it appears

A navigation appears where the theme uses it. Adding an item puts it on the site as soon as you save — there is no separate publish step for menus.

If a navigation exists but does not appear anywhere, the theme is not drawing it yet, which is a question for whoever builds the site rather than something you can fix here.

Documentation-style sidebars

Some navigations are built from files rather than dragged together — that is how a documentation sidebar usually works, so that adding a page adds it to the menu. Those open read-only, and say so. See Content written as files.