Primary menu

This section introduces the Primary links menu, which is a Drupal built in menu. It also describes a lot about menus in general, so it is a good place to start learning about menus.

The Primary links menu is usually the main menu for the site. It often appears across the top of the page, though this isn't obligatory. Different themes can change its position and appearance quite radically. It will often contain the links to the most important pages on your site, and will often be available on every page.

There are two ways to add an item to the Primary links menu (or any other menu).

Adding a menu link from the node Edit page

When you edit a node, you will see a Menu settings group on the edit page (between the Title and Body fields). Open that up and you can enter:

• Menu link title, the text which you want to appear on the menu.
• Parent item, ie which menu you want to add a link to. Choose Primary links.
• Weight, controls the position of this link on the menu. It isn't usually worth using this, you can rearrange the menu interactively, as you will see in the next section.

Adding a menu link from Menus page

Go to Navigation | Administer | Site building | Menus. This page gives you better control over your menus:

• You can add the same node to more than one menu.
• You can arrange the menu interactively.
• You can add external URLs.
• You can add a tool tip style description.

On the Menus page, choose Primary links. Pick the Add item tab. The configuration page includes:

• Path, the path the menu item links to. Normally this will be a node on your site, so use a link relative to your site URL, eg node/27. For your sites own front page use <front>. You can also use an external URL, eg http::www.cookiewiki.com.
• Menu link title, the text which you want to appear on the menu.
• Description, a short description of what the link does, which will appear if the user hovers over the link.
• Enabled, turns the link on or off. Useful if you ever needed to disable a link temporarily, without losing all its settings.
• Expanded, you will understand this after meeting multi-level menus.
• Parent item, ie which menu you want to add a link to. Choose Primary links.
• Weight, don't use this, as mentioned above, there is an easier way.

Using one or the other of these techniques, you might want to add a few links to your Primary links menu, for practice, and to try out the procedures described below.

Reordering menu items

By default, menu items are arranged in alphabetical order in a menu. This is sometimes ok, but usually you want to choose the order for yourself.

The Weight setting overrides the alphabetical order, sending heavier items to the bottom of the menu. However, this can be a bit cumbersome to use.

If you go to Administer | Site building | Menus | Primary links and select the List items tab, you will see a list of all your primary link items. You can reorder these items by dragging the item up or down the list. Grab the item by clicking and holding the mouse button over the grab handle icon at the left of the table.

Remember to push the Save configuration button when you have finished reordering the menu, otherwise you will lose your changes.

The List items page can also be used to edit or delete the item, or to change the Enabled and Expanded settings for each item.

Editing the menu

If you go to Navigation | Administer | Site building | Menus | Primary links and select the Edit menu tab, you can edit the settings for the menu itself.

The Title is the title of the menu. For some menus, it appears at the top of the menu. For the primary links it doesn't, and editing it has little effect.

Description is the description of the menu which appears on the menus page (Navigation | Administer | Site building | Menus). It isn't generally visible to users, the only people who see it are administrators who have permission to edit menus.