ARCHIVE: Menus

A new installation will have a three menus already defined: Navigation menu, Primary and Secondary links.

The navigation menu is the default menu with Drupal. It initially has items such as 'Log out', 'Create content', and other modules you install will add further items here. The Primary and Secondary menu are special menus with additional hooks for some themes to automatically display, usually in a horizontal manner in the theme header. They are empty to begin with.

To create a new menu select add menu and follow the prompts (don't forget to then enable your menu by placing the block in a region at Administer > Site building > Blocks)

Rearranging menu items and hierarchies

On the Menu administration page, you can rearrange items by using the drag and drop handle to the left. Dragging it on top of another item will cause the item being dragged to be a child of the item that it's dragged upon. Dragging it over to the left will keep it at an upper level in the tree structure. Additionally, you can move items to a different menu entirely by clicking "edit" next to the menu item and then changing the "Parent item" in the drop down box provided.

Using Secondary Links as contextual sub-menus

A special thing you can do with menus is to have your Secondary Links (which can go in a separate location, such as a sidebar block or below the main header) display the child items from the Primary Links.

Visit Administer > Site building > Menus > Settings and make sure "Menu containing primary links" and "Menu containing secondary links" are set to the same menu (most likely "Primary Menu" ). Then add the secondary items as children of the appropriate primary item. Your theme will also need to support Secondary Links and have them enabled, which you can check at Administer > Site building > Themes > [next to your theme] Configure, and ensure that Secondary Links is checked.

There is also a video that shows how to use secondary menus and theme them.