Menu Navigation

Note: As of October 24, 2008, all EditMe sites contain a dynamic navigation tree in the menu area. If your site was created before then, see the release notes and the Include Scripts page to add dynamic navigation to your Menu page.

The Menu area contains a dynamic navigation tree for your site. New pages will be appended to the bottom of this list of pages (if this isn't happening, see Default Page Setup below). Any page that specifies the Menu page as a parent on the Organize tab of the editing screen will be included in this top-level navigation list.

You can change the order of pages in this list by editing your site's Menu page and clicking the Organize tab. Simply drag and drop the Child pages to reflect the desired order and then click Save Child Pages.

As this list grows, you'll likely want to nest links within other links to create a hierarchical structure. You can do this by working with the Organize tab in the editing screen. Pages will be nested under their Parent pages in the navigation tree. The tree will automatically expand to show the current page. Simply replace Menu with some other page as the Parent page to create a hierarchical structure.

For example, say you have the following pages: Fruit, Apples, Oranges, McIntosh. By default, when you create these pages, you'll get a list of links in your Menu that looks like this:

Fruit
Apples
Oranges
McIntosh

It would make sense to organize these pages into a hierarchy, like this:

Fruit
   Apples
       McIntosh
   Oranges

You can do this by setting the Parent page of the Apples page to Fruit and removing the Menu page as its parent. Do the same for McIntosh, but set its parent to Apples. And for Oranges, set its parent to Fruit. When done, only the Fruit link will show in the menu unless the Fruit page is being shown unless it or one of its children is being viewed.

This allows a large structure of pages to be navigated on the site without creating lots of clutter in the Menu area.

Default Page Setup

If your site isn't adding new pages to the Menu area by default, complete these steps to configure your site's Default page to list new pages there by default:

1. Click Special Pages or Templates (the link depends on what Skin you have applied to your site). You can also navigate directly to http://YOURSITE.editme.com/_Templates
2. Select Templates from the Page Type drop down. This will list all the template pages on your site. You should see one named Default. This is the template used for all new pages, unless some other template is selected.
3. Select the Edit action to edit the Default page.
4. Switch to the Organize tab and add Menu as a parent page.

Test the change by creating a new page. It should be listed in your menu navigation automatically.