The basics of navigation

Created by Sloane DellOrto, Modified on Thu, 27 Mar, 2014 at 2:49 PM by Sloane DellOrto

Your navigation menu is based upon the taxonomy system, which is just a fancy way of saying a system of "hierarchy" or "organization." The primary links for your site – the main menu and child links – are built from this taxonomy. You can also think of it as a sitemap, of sorts. Here's an example from our site, and you can see how the parent terms match the navigation across the top. In this instance we've collapsed down to the first level:

If you were to expand to all three levels, it would look more like this:

Managing terms

There are two ways to manage your navigation terms:

Method 1 - go to Commands > Manage nav terms

Once you're on the manage navigation screen, you can reorder the terms by grabbing the handle to the left of a term (+) and dragging it to its new location. Make sure to scroll down and click the "save order" button at the bottom of the page or your changes will be lost.

To rename a term, click the Edit link to the right of the term, under the Operations column. Make the desired changes and click save.

To add new terms/sub-terms, click the Add term tab at the top of the Manage nav terms area.

Enter a unique name in the "Full term name" box.
If you'd like a different name to appear in the navigation menu, add a different name in the "Short name for navigation menu" box. (Note: it does not have to be shorter than the first name. It's just important that the first name (the internal name) be unique so that you can tell your terms apart when administering your site; so you may want a shorter name to display. For example, if you have a Resources area with two subterms: Journalist Resources and Advocate Resources, and in each area you want a subterm named Documents. To save confusion when administering your site, but to save repetitiveness for your visitors, you would name one term Journalist Documents, but put just "Documents" in the short term, then do a similar thing for the Advocate Documents.)
Description: not always visible, but if your theme displays it (as ours does), this is where you can add it
Structure: this is where you choose the parent of your term. If you don't choose a parent and leave "root" chosen, your new term will become part of your upper level main navigation and may have some undesired results. (Most designs call for a set number of main navigation terms and adding additional terms may make your navigation wrap to two lines)

Advanced settings and template settings are covered in the next article.

Method 2 - Managing terms from the landing page

Turn on the Show content zones on hover in the lower right corner of your screen. It should turn green when activated.
Hover over the navigation bar at the top. Click the gold edit navigation button.
Hover over the navigation term you want to change.

Click the edit button on the left of the term (looks like a piece of paper and a pencil)
Click the (+) button to add a child term

On the edit screen, make the desired changes, or add a new term following the directions above
Scroll down and save