The Navigation and Theme section explores:

1. Methods to add navigation to the website, including hyperlinks, navigation menus, and a search function.
2. Methods to customize the overall look and feel of the website by modifying and customizing the website theme and layout. 

One of the benefits of a website is its interactive nature. Clear navigation helps visitors interact and find their way through web pages. In order to achieve this, the navigation on the website must provide easy and quick access to the website's content. A visitor should be able to access almost any of the pages in just two to three clicks. 

Navigation menus help organize the website into categories or areas. For example, many corporate websites have the following items within their menu:

• Home
• About Us
• Products or Services
• News
• Contact Information

All HotDoodle websites contain a main navigation menu that contains all web pages set to display in the menu. It is dynamic and automatically updates as pages are added, deleted, or revised. Additional navigation menus may be added with different page links than the main menu. See: Create Special Menus.

Navigation menus most often appear in the Header, Sidebar, or Footer of a website. These areas are common to all pages on the website meaning they display on all pages giving a visitor access to a navigation menu no matter which page they browse.

Header – The term header refers to the top portion of a website. This area almost always contains a company’s logo and slogan, motto or tagline. Headers may also contain graphics related to the company’s products or services and/or the website’s navigation menu.

Sidebar — The term sidebar refers to the column on either the right or left of the web page most often between the header and footer. A sidebar is optional and a website may not contain one or may contain both a right and a left sidebar.

Footer – The term footer refers to the bottom portion of a website. This area almost always contains the company name and a copyright notice. Footers may also contain contact information or a text-based navigation menu for the website.

The theme of the website sets the style of the website including colors, font families, font sizes, widths and heights, borders, the look and feel of the navigational elements including page menus and backgrounds of the website. Themes can be changed in a website much like switching the faceplate on a cell phone, it does not affect the content, only the presentation, and it can be reversed at any time except with custom themes.

HotDoodle provides a variety of themes for many business and individual uses. However, some might prefer creating a unique theme or modify an existing theme. HotDoodle offers ways to Select a Different Theme, Adjust the Current Theme, and Create a Custom Theme. Creating a custom theme is an advanced operation and requires knowledge of CSS, since all HotDoodle themes are created by a Cascading Style Sheet.

All HotDoodle websites have a layout in addition to the theme. The layout of the website sets the areas of the website in which content can be inserted. These areas include headers, footers, sidebars, and main content areas of the website. The widths and images of these sections are controlled by the theme, but the layout is what determines if the section will be included and what blocks will appear in that section. HotDoodle offers way to Create Columns, Select a Different Layout, Set a Per-Page Layout, Adjust the Layout, and Create a Custom Layout.