Create and edit menus (including site-section navigation)

Owned by Jess Pietsch (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 13 Aug, 2024 by Jo Tayler
5 min read

Find out more about the 3 types of navigation included on SDP sites.

On this page:

There are 3 types of menus on Single Digital Presence (SDP) websites:

  1. Top menu

  2. Side menu (called site-section navigation)

  3. Footer menu – made up of the 'fat' footer (which mirrors the first 2 levels of the top menu) and the smaller menu across the bottom.

All sites must have the top and footer menus. Side menus are optional; these are often used as sub-menus on site sections.

All menus on SDP sites are built manually so when you archive a page or change it’s URL or name, you need to update any menus that it’s included in as well.

Please note: if you’re creating a new menu or adding a new page to a menu, the menu or new page will need to be published to display. Any new menus or new pages will not display in preview.

Top menu (primary navigation)

The top menu is created by site administrators when a new site is set up. It's usually called 'Main menu' in the CMS.

In addition to displaying navigation on the live website, the top menu is also used to:

  • populate the fat footer on the live site

  • populate the sitemap

  • create breadcrumbs.

The front-end display of the top menu is limited to only display 4 levels of menu. The menu allows more than 4 levels in the back end to allow us to set up breadcrumbs for pages while not letting the live website’s menu go too deep (and off the side of the screen).

Read about the specifications for primary navigation on the Ripple website. Note the responsive behaviour section, which indicates how many items will display on the top menu at selected breakpoints (device/screen sizes). On most SDP websites, the site search is mandatory, so on a standard desktop you’ll see 6 links.

Industry best practice has been recommending no more than 7 links on top navigation for some time. However, as with most rules, it depends on several factors, including the scope of content, typical user goals, how well the labels describe the content and the order of items. This Nielsen Norman Group video ‘How Many Items in a Navigation Menu?’ explains these.

Top menu for vic.gov.au

Sidebar menu (site-section navigation)

Most pages in a site section should have their site-section navigation set to display.

These menus are created and managed manually, so if you publish a new page to your site section, you need to also add it to your site-section menu.

Creating a site-section navigation menu

The menu will be created by an SDP team member initially, and then should be maintained and updated by editors and approvers.

Editing a site-section navigation menu

  • To add, remove or reorder items, go to the menus landing page (Structure > Menus).

  • Find the menu with the name of your site section (e.g. vic.gov.au - <site section name>).

  • Click on the Edit menu button on the right side of the screen.

  • Add items one by one by clicking the + Add link button. 

  • In the Add menu link screen, start with the 2nd field (“Link”) first – start typing the page title and choose the correct page from the list of published pages that appears in the dropdown.

  • You then need to add the Menu link title. You should generally use the full page title here; in certain circumstances it’s fine to use a shortened version, such as “About us”.

Changes made to menus appear on the live website immediately, so while you're working on a menu and not ready for the updates to go live yet you should make sure to uncheck the Enabled option. This means your menu additions will be saved in the CMS, but not live on the website yet.

Reordering new items in a site section menu

Once you’ve added all the menu items you want to include, go back to view the menu page and drag and drop your items into order using the grabber tool. 

You can also drag to ‘indent’ the items to push them to level 2 or 3. Our side menus only display down to level 3.

Click Save when you’re done.

Our recommended process for updating menus

  1. Uncheck the Enabled option as you’re adding links to your menu.

  2. Go back to view the menu as a whole and drag-and-drop your links into the right positions.

  3. Tick all the checkboxes in the Enabled column.

  4. Click the save button at the bottom of the page and preview your menu on a published page.

Displaying the site-section navigation menu on a page

We generally recommend to not display this menu on the site section's 'home' page, but it should appear on all other pages published to a site section. 

To have the menu appear on a page, go in to edit that page and:

  • make sure the page’s site section matches the menu - the site section checkbox is what determines which menu is displayed (this is another reason tagging a page to multiple site sections is bad practice)

  • open the Site-section navigation accordion

  • tick the 'Show Site-section Navigation?' checkbox

  • add the title you’re using for your menu (this is a free text field but the title should be consistent across all pages).

What you put in the Site-section navigation title field will display as a heading at the top of the menu. This title helps users to orientate themselves within the site section.

Further information on using menus

  • We know from user testing that an overwhelming majority of users never use the main menu.

  • Users on mobile (the majority of users on all of our sites) never see the site-section navigation menu because it's pushed to the bottom of the page.

  • The main menu user interface can’t handle the depth of IA present on some sites. We can display links to pages 4 levels deep only.

  • The user interface is not ideal due to the repetition of parent items, so many users don't understand the second instance of a parent item is clickable.

  • Breadcrumbs are drawn from the main menu. If a page is in the top navigation, breadcrumbs show the content structure and relationship. But when a page is not in the top navigation, the breadcrumbs display it as one level from home. Hence the site doesn't have a consistent breadcrumb experience on all pages.

  • In content.vic.gov.au, all menus are built manually. There's no relationship between a site's main menu and any site-section navigation (side menus).

Footer menus

The same footer pages display on all pages in vic.gov.au and most semi-independent sites (i.e. sites using http://content.vic.gov.au to edit and publish).

In the Menus section of the CMS, it's called 'Footer menu' (e.g. vic.gov.au - FOOTER MENU).

Independent sites have their own instance of the CMS and so they have their own footer menu and selected footer pages - most sites use most of the same pages (Accessibility, Disclaimer, Copyright) and some have their own Privacy page, while some still use the core Vic Gov privacy page. These should be set up based on the content in the footer pages on vic.gov.au unless there's a need for site-specific information. Most of the footer pages on vic.gov.au are standard, though the privacy page has some specific information for certain site sections.

All footer menus should include:

  • Privacy

  • Disclaimer

  • Copyright

  • Accessibility

  • Freedom of information

  • Sitemap

  • Contact us

Sitemap

When you create a footer menu, all links go to pages (nodes) in the CMS except for the Sitemap link.

The sitemap is dynamically generated, so you need to type an absolute link (e.g. https://www.vic.gov.au/sitemap). You can add the URL into the footer menu, but make sure to test it on the live site when you go live.