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Menus and Breadcrumbs

Understanding Menus and Breadcrumbs

Cascade automatically creates your menus and breadcrumbs for you by using your folders. Your folders provide the menu and breadcrumb text, and the order of your folders determines the order of items in your menus. This is why every content page exists inside its own, personal folder. Without this personal folder, a page could not exist in any menu.

Adding Items to Your Menu

To add a new item to your menu, you'll need to select Add Content >> Folder with some type of page  (eg. Folder with Content Page, Folder with Redirect, etc.)

Editing the Text of Your Menus and Breadcrumbs
  1. Edit the folder for your menu item
  2. Change the Display Name field
  3. Submit >> Check Content & Submit then publish your site

Question: What happens if I edit a folder and I don't enter anything in the Breadcrumb field?
Answer: The folder's Display Name value will be used by default.

Question: I created a "Folder with content page" and the page is called index. Can I change the name of the page?
Answer: Please don't. Menus and breadcrumbs auto-link to a file named index.

Hiding (and un-hiding) a Menu Link

Edit any folder. Uncheck "Display in Menu," Save & Preview >> Submit then publish your site. Your folder is now "hidden" from all menus. To un-do this action (and allow the item to display in your menus), simply edit the folder, re-check "Display in Menu," Save & Preview >> Submit then publish your site.

Remember, a hidden folder still gets published and people with whom you share its direct URL can view it, but they will not be able to get to it by way of a menu link. Hiding a page from menus is different than keeping it off the website altogether. A hidden page can be published. To prevent a page from being published or to unpublish a page see the Publishing help page.

Change the Order of Your Menu Links

The order of menu items is determined by their "folder order." Learn how to control the folder order.

Adjusting Parent, Siblings and Children Displaying in the Menu

Assuming you have some folders in your site that are not hidden, each page provides a couple of additional menu display options. Edit your page and you will see a "Show Siblings" checkbox. If this value is checked, folders at the same level as your page's folder will be displayed in the menu. If "Show Siblings" is unchecked, only the Display Names of children folders will be in the menu. As a general rule of thumb, we check "Show Siblings" on all pages except for a site's homepage. For a homepage it is usually best to show just children in the menu.

On each page there is also a "Show Parent" checkbox. If you check this box on a page, a link to the parent folder is included at the top of this page's menu. This is handy for deep nested content as it gives your visitors a little more context as to where they are in your site. You should be consistent in your use of Parent links. 

Sometimes the best way to grasp the effects of these settings is to experiment with them. Go on ... check a box, Save & Preview then Submit. See what it does to the menu on your page.