It is advisable to use the “Main navigation” Custom Block to add a secondary menu to most pages of the website. The menu should be automatically populated with the correct child and sibling pages for the appropriate section of the site. Which means you will not have to manually edit every page when menu items change, woo hoo!
Each of our websites has it’s own configurations and design patterns for handling the secondary menu. You will find guidance on your site’s Content Editor Guide specific to your website. It is best practice to remain consistent throughout your website. If you would like to change something about the way your site manages the menu, please contact the COFA Web team by emailing us at cofawebmaster@austin.utexas.edu.
On this page:
- On Mobile
- Troubleshooting
- Basic Adding Main Navigation Block Instructions
- Advanced Main Navigation Block Instructions
- I Need a Menu not tied to the Main Navigation of the Website
On Mobile
This block type does not display on mobile when the mobile menu becomes visible, since all menu items are visible in the mobile drop-down, page “real estate” is limited on mobile and the document flow from top to bottom makes the secondary navigation seem less of a convenience and many times more confusing.
Troubleshooting
- If the wrong items display in the menu, it may be because the page has not been added to the site menu in the correct order. You can drag-and-drop items on the Main navigation interface page.
- If menu items are displaying as expanded but you want them to be collapsed it may be because the “Show as expanded” is checked on the parent menu link item in
- the Main navigation interface page.
- The menus on Landing pages with View blocks, such as the Directory landing page, have to be configured by the web team.
Basic Adding Main Navigation Block Instructions
You will find the link to open the Main navigation Block interface on the first sidebar of the Add Block interface in Layout Builder, below the Reusable Content blocks:
The Popup will have a lot of checkboxes, toggles and things to fill in. Simply follow the steps on your Content Editor Guide and if you have questions, reach out to the web team.
For most of our sites the steps for filling out the form are:
- Check the box to “Display title”. Further down the steps you will select the parent menu item and make it display as the block title. You will also make it a link.
- Open the “Menu levels” set of fields:
- Set the “Initial visibility level” to match the page level in the Main navigation, usually 1.
- The “Number of levels to display” is usually unlimited.
- Usually, do not check the box to “Expand all menu links,” unless
- You want the children of sibling menu items to display, (i.e. you want deeper levels of the menu to display).
- The parent is a <nolink> label, because the only way for people to access the pages below the label is if they are displayed.
- Open the “Advanced options” set of fields:
- Select the top-level parent item that this page is a child of from the “Fixed parent item” dropdown, (i.e. You want to make it clear that this page is a part of the section from the top-level of the main navigation)
- From the “Use as title” dropdown, select “Fixed parent item’s title”
- Check the box “Link the title?”
- You should not need to set any other configurations.
Advanced Main Navigation Block Instructions
You will see some other options in the form. Many of them would be applicable if the menu block displayed by default on all pages, which is not how our sites are set up. We have not yet found them to be relevant for our system. If you do play with them and and find a use case, please let us know.
Following, are some notes about what these options do:
Render parent item
After you select the “Fixed parent item” a check box to “Render parent item” will display.
This does essentially the same thing as checking the box to “Display title” in combo with selecting the “Fixed parent item’s title” from the “Use as title” dropdown and checking the box “Link the title?” which is what we’ve instructed for most sites. The difference is that it will result in slightly different styling, with the link incorporated into the menu rather than as a heading for the menu. It could allow you to write a different title text for block.
It’s hard to imagine a useful use case, but let us know if you want to explore this option.
Hide on pages not included in menu
There is no use case for this option since we do not automatically display menus on any pages. If you do not want the menu do not add it to the page.
Make the initial visibility level follow the active menu item.
This is unlikely to be useful and usually results in no items in the menu.
- If you select “Children of active menu item” it will display only the children of the page. Which could be helpful for pages that are linear or steps in a process.
- Unchecking the “Expand all menu links” is usually a better choice than selecting “Active menu item” to be the initial visibility level.
HTML and style options set of fields
Useless. Please ignore.
I Need a Menu not tied to the Main Navigation of the Website
There are some very edge case scenarios where you might need a list of links that looks like a menu. Check out what you can do with the Quick Links block.
