The site menu

Start hereNavigation and lookThe site menuThe menu is the list of links in your site's header. This page covers the Menu screen: putting pages in order, nesting them into dropdowns, adding links to other sites and publishing your changes.Where the menu comes fromEvery site starts with a menu that follows the Pages list. Each published page with Show in menu ticked appears in it, in the same order and nesting as the Pages list, and pages nested under another page become its dropdown.Once you publish a menu from the Menu screen, the menu has an order of its own. From then on, moving a page in the Pages list changes its address, not its place in the menu. You arrange the menu on the Menu screen instead.You can go back at any time: at the bottom of the Menu screen, Let the menu follow the Pages list again rebuilds the live menu from the Pages list straight away. The menu you had is kept in the version history.The Menu screenOpen Menu under Content in the sidebar. Until you publish a menu of your own, a yellow note at the top says Your menu follows the Pages list, and the screen opens on that menu so you can start from it.Each row is one item, marked Page, Group, Link or Heading. A page's row shows its address. A short note under an item explains when it is hidden from visitors: Not published — hidden until the page is, or Members only — hidden from everyone else.The Menu screen.Reordering and nesting

Grab an item by the handle on its left.

Drag it up or down to move it.

To put it in a dropdown, drag it to the right while it sits under the item it should belong to. Drag it back to the left to bring it out again.

Let go. Anything nested under the item moves with it.

The bin button at the end of a row removes that item from the menu. Anything under it moves up a level rather than disappearing. Removing a page from the menu never deletes the page.Labels, links and headings

Labels: each row has a box for the words shown in the menu. For a page, leave it blank to use the page's title (shown faintly in the box), or type something shorter, such as "About" for "About our company".

Add a page: choose a page that isn't in the menu yet and press Add. Draft pages are marked (draft); they show in the menu once published.

Add a link: type a Label and an address, then Add. Use a full address (https://…) for another website, or a path such as /shop for somewhere on yours.

Add a heading: a dropdown with no page of its own. Type its name, press Add, then drag items under it. A heading with nothing visible under it is left out of the menu.

New items are added at the bottom of the menu; drag them to where they belong.A Group item is a page made as a Menu group when it was created: it has no page of its own and just gathers the pages under it into a dropdown. It behaves like a heading that lives in the Pages list.Publishing the menuEvery change is saved as a draft as you go (Auto-saves a draft). Visitors keep seeing the published menu until you press Publish menu, and then it changes on every page at once. The button only wakes up once there is a change to publish.

Preview opens your home page with every unpublished change: the menu, reusable blocks and the page.

Discard throws away the draft and goes back to the published menu.

Schedule publishes the draft at a date and time you choose.

The history button lists earlier versions. Restoring one puts it in the draft; nothing changes for visitors until you publish.

Show in menu, on a pageEach page's Settings tab, under Hierarchy & menu, has Show in menu and a Menu label (which defaults to the page title).

While the menu follows the Pages list, these decide straight away whether and how the page appears.

Once the menu has its own order, they are shortcuts into the Menu screen's draft: ticking or unticking them, or changing the label, waits for Publish menu.

One exception: a page with Show in menu ticked joins the live menu as soon as the page itself is published, under its parent page's item if it has one.

A page that is unpublished, moved to the bin or restricted to members drops out of the menu for anyone who can't see it, and comes back in the same place when it can be seen again.How the menu looks (colours, dropdowns, the ☰ button on phones) is set on the Nav block in your header and in your theme's Header menu and Mobile menu settings. See Every block, explained and Themes.← Reusable blocksThemes →Getting startedPagesBuilding with blocksNavigation and lookMediaForms and leadsCatalogueShopBookings and membersRunning the siteCairnWebsites for businesses that need more than a brochure. Built, hosted and kept running by us.StartBuildRun© 2026 Cairn. All rights reserved.Built with Cairn.