A menu is its own record
Menus are managed in Content » Menus. A menu is a list of menu items, and each item points wherever you choose. Most sites have a header menu and a footer menu, and can have as many others as they need.
So adding a page does not add it to a menu. In exchange:
- A menu label can be shorter than the page's title: "Professional services and consulting" can be "Services" in the menu.
- A menu can point at a blog, an FAQ, a record of another kind, or another site, not only at pages.
- Pages can stay out of the navigation entirely, which is what you want for campaign landing pages.
- The order of a menu follows importance, not the page tree.
Menu items
Each item has a name, the label visitors see, and a type:
- Content links the item to a record, such as a page or a blog post. Use it for anything on your own site: the item follows the record when its address changes.
- URL links to an address you type. Use it for other sites; an address on your own site typed here does not follow a page that moves.
- Text only is a label that links nowhere, such as a column heading in a large menu.
- Controller Function links to a listing the platform provides, such as a blog's list of posts.
Items can have child items, which become dropdowns. Drag an item by its handle to move it; the order and nesting in the admin are the order and nesting on the site. More than two levels is hard to use on a phone.
Keeping menus right
- Link to your own pages with the Content type, so a renamed or moved page does not break the menu.
- When you unpublish or delete a page, check the menus in the same sitting: an item pointing at it leads to "not found".
What good navigation looks like
Keep the top level short: five to seven items is about the limit before people stop reading and start scanning. Label items with the words visitors use, not the names of internal departments.