Site Navigation

Now that we know how to create and edit content items, let’s discuss Site Navigation. Site Navigation is about placing your new content item within the hierarchy of the site i.e. being able to find a page through menus and links from pages already on the site. There are three major topics to discuss when discussing Site Navigation: 

  1. URLs 

  1. Menus 

  1. Feeds 

Most of this information relates to navigation for Basic and Listing Pages as the other content types are either automatically uploaded, or only accessible through blocks on Basic and Listing Pages. 

 

 

URLs 

When creating the title of a Basic or Listing Page, a URL is automatically generated. Most of the time, this URL will be great for the page. To see the autogenerated URL, save the item as unpublished and check the URL on the page. If the autogenerated URL is not ideal (too long, hard to remember, awkward escape character’s, etc.), you can set an alias (alternate URL) in the URL Alias box on the item editing page. You can manually choose the URL there. While there are rules and quirks that come with setting up URLs, Drupal will automatically ensure that your alias is valid by tweaking it slightly in the case where your alias isn’t valid. Drupal will also throw an error if the alias already exists for another page. 

When using the URL of a page within the A.T.L.A.S. website in a block, you only need to write the end of the URL (i.e. instead of “www.example.com/about”, you can just use “/about”). If you are linking to an external page, the entire URL is necessary. 

For more information about URLs and Drupal, click here. 

 

Menus 

Blocks in Basic Pages such as Cards, Links, Button Blocks, Content, and Side Menus already provide opportunities for navigating to a content item. When creating a new content item (specifically Basic and Listing Pages), go through the website and decide which block on which pages should like to the new content item and add it using the item’s URL. This will help with making the item easy to find, but sometimes it is not enough. 

The other key way to navigate to a page is through menus. There are two menus that you will find yourself editing most: 

  1. Main Navigation – This is the menu that is the first item on the screen after the admin menu. It has options like “About”, “Get Involved”, “Latest”, “Activities”, “Collaborations”, and “Resources”. It relies on dropdown menus to find pages at a more granular level. This will be the main tool that visitors use to navigate the site. 

  1. Footer Navigation – This is the menu that is the last item on the page. It has social media links as well as most of the information in Main Navigation. The menu is static (no dropdowns) so all links included are accessible on first glance. Footer navigation tends to only include the first two hierarchy levels of the main menu.  

Follow these steps to edit a menu: 

  1. Go to the administration menu (click “Manage” if it is hidden) then click “Structure” and then “Menus.” 

  1. Locate the menu you wish to edit and click “Edit.” 

  1. Click the “Add Link” button at the top of the page. 

  1. Select the correct “Parent Page” to ensure that the link is added to the right spot on the menu. 

If the pages on the same level as the page you added all link to each other through side menus, be sure to update all side menus as necessary. 

To change the order of the links in menus, see Container Blocks and Ordering. The process of changing the order of links in menus is the same process as changing the order of sub-blocks in blocks. 

 

Feeds 

There are some pages on the website that may be difficult to edit. This is because these are feeds that automatically update themselves which makes editing them cumbersome. The main feeds on the A.T.L.A.S. site are the following: 

  1. “Events” page in “Latest.” This automatically stays up to date as events are imported from Indico. 

  1. “In the News” page in “Latest.” This is automatically updated with News content items as they are created. 

  1. Some aspects of the Home page; namely, the “In the News” block is updated with the most recent News content items. 

If you wish to edit any of these pages and are having difficulty with other pages, please contact Suzanne Junk at sjunk@bnl.gov. 

These feeds are the primary ways News and Events content items are accessed on the site (besides Events blocks on Basic Pages). Profiles are the content type not accounted for in this section. This is because Profiles are exclusively linked by the Profiles block on Basic Pages, and therefore we do not need to worry about navigation for them.