Editing the Local Menu

The bottom of the local navigation menu page provides a form for adding new entries. You can add 3 sort of entries:

  • Links to pages within the current module
  • Link to other locations (within the SERC server or beyond)
  • Headings that don't act as links

The first of these will be the most common--just select the page from the initial pull-down menu. If you're linking outside the module just enter the URL (following the same conventions as for links within your text) in the "URL of the page" box. If you're making a heading just put the word 'heading' (no quotes) into that box. So, if you're linking to a page within the current module, the "URL of the page" box should be empty.

screen shot of top of menu editing form

If you're linking to an outside site or making a heading, put the text for the entry (the text folks will click on or the heading itself) in the 'Title of the page' box (again, leave this empty if you're pointing to a local page).

From the next pull down select where in the menu this entry will appear. The 'top' item in the menu is the 'first' page in the module (as far as the Next/Previous buttons are concerned) and others follow after it, down the list. Normally your index.html page will be at the top of the list. Note that while you can't re-order elements once added to the list, it's straightforward to delete an entry and add it back in the new location.

Finally you can select whether the entry should be a sub-menu of an existing entry. As discussed above this just controls when an item is hidden. Entries not in sub-menus always show up in the left menu (at least for the local module).

And of course you'll need to click the "Add this link to the left menu" button at the bottom to make things actually happen.

In many cases there's a one-to-one correspondence between what you put in this local menu and what actually shows up in the left menu of a given page. However, with some larger sites Serckit uses a global left menu which shows an aggregate of the local menu and links to other modules in the site. You don't have direct control over this broader structure from Serckit except that modules which don't have index.html pages (or in which they have been renamed to something else) won't appear in this menu structure.