Create a Menu

Owned by Karin Wrzesisnki
Last updated: Sept 28, 2023 by Jessica CodaVersion comment
6 min read

Menus help visitors navigate around the site. They specify the links that are in the red menu across the top of you site, and the links in the footer. You can also add supplemental menus to pages in your site using Zuse Create.



There are a couple different types of menus that you can add to your page using Zuse Create, and you can specify menus for Theme Locations.

Theme Locations: To create menus for Theme Locations, review the instructions below.

  • Main Red Menu: this is the menu on the big red bar across the top of site. This should be the main way visitors navigate your site.

  • Additional Footer menu: optionally add a menu to the third column of the footer of your site.

There are three other types of menus that can be added to a page using Zuse Create. Only Supplemental Menus are actually created in the collections activity (instructions below) like the theme menus.

  • Supplemental Menu: This is a way to put a menu that you have built on a page. For example, you could build a Helpful Links menu that you want to put on one or more of your pages. First, build the menu in the collections activity, and then add the menu to your site using Zuse Create.

  • Sub-page Menu: This is an automatically-generated list of sub-pages given a parent page. This may be useful to put on the parent page and the sub pages. For example if you build a Staff Directory parent page and sub-pages for every staff person a adding a sub-page menu could ease navigation for visitors to your site. This menu will update automatically when you add or remove sub-pages, so you don't have to spend extra time maintaining it.

  • Tab/Accordion Menu: This is not a menu in the traditional sense of a list of links. It is a way to include a lot of information on a single page. Accordion menus are a list of headings that can be opened to reveal more content. A tab menu is a set of tabs that each have additional content on them.

Define a Menu

You must define a menu before you can add items to it.

  1. From the Collections menu on the left-hand side of the Dashboard, select the Menus option to bring up the Menu Editor.

  2. Select Create a new menu at the top of the page.

  3. Enter a name for your new menu in the Menu Name box.

  4. Click the Create Menu button.

Your new custom menu has now been defined.

Add Items to a Menu

Add A Page to Your Menu

  1. With your menu open, in the accordion on the left side of the page, locate the pane titled Pages.

  2. Within this pane, select the View All tab to bring up a list of all the currently published Pages on your site.

  3. Select the Page(s) that you want to add by clicking the checkbox next to each Page's title. A page must be published to be available to be selected.

  4. Click the Add to Menu button located at the bottom of this pane to add your selection(s) to the menu that you created in the previous step.

  5. Click the Save Menu button once you've added all the menu items you want.

Your custom menu has now been saved.

  1. Select the Links option in the accordion on the left side of the menu page.

  2. Specify the URL and Link Text (caption) you want to appear for the menu item. If you are linking to a site outside of wisconsin.edu, you must begin the URL with http://. Remember that linking to a different site from our website is an endorsement of the content of that website.

  3. Click the Add to Menu button located at the bottom of this pane to add the link to the menu.

  4. Click the Save Menu button once you've added all the links you want.

Add Other Types of Items to Your Menu

You can also add links to Events, Post Categories, Event Categories, Files, News Stories, Posts, Tags, and News Categorizes. Use the different accordion option to choose the type of content you want. If you don't see the accordion for the type of content you want, select the Screen Options tab at the top right of the screen (under the "Howdy...") and check the options you would like to see.

Deleting a Menu Item

  1. Locate the menu item that you want to remove in the menu editor window.

  2. Click on the arrow icon in the right side of the menu item/box to expand it.

  3. Click on the Remove link. The menu item/box will be immediately removed.

  4. Click the Save Menu button to save your changes.

Edit a Menu Item

Edit the display name of a menu item or update the URL of an external link by choosing the little grey triangle on the menu item you wish to edit.



 

Customizing Menu Item Labels

The Navigation Label
This field specifies the title of the item on your custom menu. The navigation label will display as the link text on the menu. It defaults to the page title but can be updated and doesn’t need to equal the page title.

The Title Attribute
This field specifies the Alternative ('Alt') text for the menu item. Use it if you need to give more context to the menu item for screen readers.

  1. Click on the arrow in the top right-hand corner of the menu item to expand it.

  2. Enter the values for the Navigation Label and Title Attribute that you want to assign to the item.

  3. Click the Save Menu button to save your changes.

Ordering Your Menus and Creating A Multi-level Main Menu

The menu editor allows you to re-order the menu or create multi-level menus using a simple 'drag and drop' interface. Drag menu items up or down to change their order of appearance in the menu. Drag menu items left or right in order to create sub-levels within your menu.

Although you can build many levels on any menus, our site only supports two-level menus in the Main Red Menu and for menus inserted using the Supplemental Menu option. If you use a multi-level menu on the footer, the child menu items will not appear. If you include more than two levels in your main menu or supplemental menu, the third and greater level menu items will appear on the same level as the second level items.

To make one menu item a subordinate of another, you need to position the 'child' underneath its 'parent' and then drag it slightly to the right.

  1. Position the mouse over the 'child' menu item.

  2. While holding the left mouse button, drag it to the right.

  3. Release the mouse button.

  4. Repeat these steps for each sub-menu item.

  5. Click the Save Menu button in the Menu Editor to save your changes.

Adding Your Menu to Your Site

There are 2 ways to add a new menu to your site. Either using a Theme Location (the main red menu or in the footer) or using a supplemental menu Zuse Create module.

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the menu editor window.

  2. In the section titled Theme locations, click the check box for the location where you want your menu to appear. There are two theme location you can choose from - the Main Red Menu appears below the page name at the top of the page (as well as in the second column of the footer), and the Site Footer appears in the third column of the footer.

  3. Click Save menu once you've made your selection.