Site Building

5.5. Concept: Menu for Drupal 8, 9, and 10

What is a menu?

Menus are a collection of links used to navigate a website. The core Menu UI module provides an interface to control and customize the menu system. Menus are primarily displayed as a hierarchical list of links. By default, new menu links are placed inside a built-in menu labeled Main navigation, but administrators can also create custom menus.

The core Standard installation profile contains five menus:

Main navigation
Links to sections intended for site visitors. They are usually created by site administrators.
Administration
Links to administrative tasks. This menu mainly contains links supplied by modules on your site.
User account menu
Links to tasks associated with the user account such as My account and Log out.
Footer
Links to important pages within the site intended for the footer. They are usually created by site administrators.
Tools
Links to tasks necessary for site visitors. Some modules feature their links here.

You can customize menus in the following ways, using the menu administration functionality:

  • Creating new custom menus.
  • Adding new menu links.
  • Reordering menu links by setting their "weight" or by dragging them into place.
  • Renaming menu links (link title).
  • Changing the link description (the tooltip that appears when you mouse over a menu link).
  • Moving a menu link into a different menu by editing its Parent link property.

A menu link will only be shown to a visitor if they have the rights to view the page it links to. For example, the admin menu link is not shown to visitors who are not logged in.

Related topics

Attributions

Written and edited by Ajay Viswambharan, Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, Jennifer Hodgdon and Bill Seremetis.