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Menu Block

The Menu Block lets you create and insert a site menu to help visitors navigate through your site.

At times, it is useful to have pages that exist, but are not in the navigation hierarchy. These might be used for pop-up explanations or might have basic information such as "Contact me" that is featured from hand-coded links. Removing pages can make the main navigation simpler.

Removing a page from all automatic menus requires edits the page properties and remove selection from "Show in Menu". The page might still be public and accessible to those who find it; however the page will not be discovered unless a link has been manually assigned.

Manage the visibility of a page to various visitors by editing page properties and deselecting "Public?". The page will now be seen only by those whom you add via the individual or group permissions for the page. These settings are managed under page properties in edit mode.  When a page is not public and if a visitor is not logged in or has not been granted "view" access, then the page will not be displayed regardless if they find its URL by other means - the homepage will appear in its place.

To have a page pop-up, edits its properties and change to use a pop-up subtheme. Subthemes are alternative main page layouts and generally for pop-ups it is best to use a layout without a header banner or navigation menu. Be sure to select "open in new window".


Special Menus

Most websites have one main menu bar. Perhaps sections of the menu bar tabs are visible to specific user, but these public and private sections are apart of one hierarchy.

Some site may need multiple, unique menus. For example, a site owner may want footer links for pages that share information regarding their "Terms, Privacy, Contact Us, or Jobs" information, and do not want these links to be displayed in the main menu.

There are two options to create this site design.

Option 1:

Create a special menu tab in the main main bar with the footer links (unique links) as sub pages. This will be a "special menu" tab that can be configured to be hidden to the public. For example, give the tab a title of "Footer Links" or "Corporate" to distinguish your special menu from other tabs.

Next, a menu block would then be inserted in the footer. Edit this menu block and enter the special menu tab name. If  "corporate" were entered in the menu bar, as well in the menu block, then the footer menu would display only these pages.

Special menu names can be what you wish, however be consistent, or else the sub pages may not appear. All pages in a menu can be view and manged by going to the Page button in the control bar, and clicking Manage All Pages.

Option 2:

Mark these special pages that are created as sub pages in the main menu as not Shown in menu, and insert a general block as the footer. The links to the special pages can be hand created in a general block.  This hand-built menu approach is not dynamic since pages do not automatically updated as pages are renamed or moved.

Note: This is not the reccommended way to create and manage special pages.

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