Adding a New Menu
From Joomla! Documentation
How to Add a New Menu
Introduction[edit]
For content to be accessed on your Joomla! website items need to be assigned to a Menu. A standard installation of Joomla! creates a Main Menu for you. In many cases you will use only one menu but you can have more than one. This allows you to create Menus for different types of content, hidden content, user role specific content and more.
In this tutorial, you’ll find a complete walk-through of the steps involved in creating a Menu in a Joomla! site. We will set up a new Menu, create a Menu Module, position it in a defined location in the website template and add Menu Items to it.
Create A New Menu[edit]
Open a new browser window and type in the URL, which will be similar to http://www.your-site-name-here.com/administrator
or, if you have Joomla! installed on your local computer, http://localhost/your-folder-name-here/administrator
. Here you will have to log in as an Administrator or Super Administrator.
There are 2 ways to access the Menu Manager that is used to add a Menu:
- From the Home Dashboard, in the Sidebar Menu click the Menu Dashboard Icon to be taken to the Menu Manager, then click Manage.
- Or, from the Home Dashboard, in the Sidebar Menu expand the Menus section and then click on Manage.
When the Menu Manager opens it will display current menus and a top toolbar with a + New button. Click the + New button.
Now a Title and Unique Name are required. A Description is optional:
Title: A proper title for the menu. This is used to identify the menu in the Menu Manager.
Unique Name: This should be a unique identification name used by Joomla! to identify this menu. Spaces are not allowed but you may use the '-' character such as resources-menu.
Description: Although not required, a description of the menu can be useful for your own or other Site Administrators reference.
Click the Save or the Save & Close toolbar button to create the new menu. The Save & Close button will return you to the Menu Manager. If you were creating more than one menu you also have the option to click Save & New. To leave without saving the menu click the Cancel toolbar button.
If you chose Save & Close, you will see your new menu in the list of Menus.
At this point you would be able to start adding items to your new menu. However we are going to create a module that will display your menu and we can do that from within the Menu Manager.
Create the Module for Your Menu[edit]
Click the Add a module for this menu button.
A Menu Module will open ready for input of the necessary information. Here are a few of the most basic points regarding the Menu Module:
The Title field is required, so create a descriptive title. If you want this title displayed on the front of the website, click on the "Show Title" button on the right. Notice the Select Menu field. This should show the name of the Menu you just created. You need to select a Position in your template for where you want your menu to appear. Note: getting it to look the way you want it to depends on your template styling. Select the postion you require.
There are many options to choose from in the Menu Module such as publishing dates, user access, and sub-menu items just to name a few. For detailed information about the Menu Module and all it's parameters see: Module Menu.
Once the information has been added click Save & Close and you will be returned to the Menu Manager.
Add Items To Your Menu[edit]
To create the links in your menu you need to add Menu Items. There are many kinds of Menu Item Types in Joomla. Some are included in the core installation and many third-party components may add more types also. For this tutorial we will add links to single articles.
The Menu Manager list will now include the new Menu. In the Menu Items column, click the icon.
To begin with, this will present an empty list. Click on the New button in the Toolbar.
The Menus: New Item panel will open. We will add a single article to the Menu:
- In the Title field add the title you want to appear in the Menu.
- In the Menu Item Type field click the Select button then Single Article then Single Article.
- In the Select Article field click the Select button which will open a list of your articles. Select your article.
- Check the Menu field is set to the new Menu.
- The Status field should be set to Published.
- Click Save & Close.
Add more Menu Items to the new Menu.
Once items have been added to the Menu we can check to see that the Menu is displayed on the website in the correct position.
To recap, we have created a new Menu, then a Menu Module to display the Menu on the website and finally we have added some single article links to the new Menu. Checking the website we can see the Menu is displayed in the position we chose and it displays the single article links added to the menu.