Navigation Menu

The navigation menu is automatically created from your content files.

All configurations options apply to all pages but can be changed in each page’s front matter.

Expand State of Nested Sections

Option Front Matter You can change how the theme submenus appear with alwaysopen.

If alwaysopen=false for any given entry, its children will not be shown in the menu as long as it is not necessary for the sake of navigation.

The theme generates the expand state based on the following rules:

• all parent entries of the active page including their visible siblings are shown regardless of any settings
• immediate child entries of the active page are shown regardless of any settings
• if not overridden, all other first level entries behave like they would have been given alwaysopen=false
• if not overridden, all other entries of levels besides the first behave like they would have been given alwaysopen=true
• all visible entries show their immediate child entries if alwaysopen=true; this proceeds recursively
• all remaining entries are not shown

alwaysopen = false

alwaysopen: false

{
   "alwaysopen": false
}

Expander for Nested Sections

Option Front Matter Set collapsibleMenu=true to add an expander for submenus. This shows submenus as collapsible trees with a clickable expander.

collapsibleMenu = true

collapsibleMenu: true

{
   "collapsibleMenu": true
}

Ordering Sibling Menu Entries

By Weight

Hugo provides a simple way to handle order for your pages by setting the weight front matter to a number.

+++
title = 'My page'
weight = 5
+++

---
title: My page
weight: 5
---

{
   "title": "My page",
   "weight": 5
}

By Other

Option Front Matter Using the weight for sorting can get cumbersome if you, for example, just want to sort alphabetically. Each time you add a new page in the set of pages, you may have to renumber some or all of them to make space for the new page.

ordersectionsby = 'linktitle'

ordersectionsby: linktitle

{
   "ordersectionsby": "linktitle"
}

Custom Title for Menu Entries

By default, the Relearn theme will use a page’s title front matter for the menu entry.

Front Matter But a page’s title has to be descriptive on its own while the menu is a hierarchy. Use linkTitle to shorten the text of the menu entry.

For example for a page named install/linux.md

+++
linkTitle = 'Linux'
title = 'Install on Linux'
+++

---
linkTitle: Linux
title: Install on Linux
---

{
   "linkTitle": "Linux",
   "title": "Install on Linux"
}

Add Icon to a Menu Entry

Front Matter In the page front matter, add a menuPre to insert any HTML code before the menu label. You can also set menuPost to insert HTML code after the menu label.

The example below uses the GitHub icon.

+++
menuPre = '<i class="fab fa-github"></i> '
title = 'GitHub Repo'
+++

---
menuPre: '<i class="fab fa-github"></i> '
title: GitHub Repo
---

{
   "menuPre": "\u003ci class=\"fab fa-github\"\u003e\u003c/i\u003e ",
   "title": "GitHub Repo"
}

Disable Section Pages

You may want to structure your pages in a hierarchical way but don’t want to generate pages for those sections? The theme got you covered.

To stay with the initial example: Suppose you want first-chapter/first-page appear in the sidebar but don’t want to generate a page for it. So the entry in the sidebar should not be clickable but should show an expander.

For this, open content/first-chapter/first-page/_index.md and add the following front matter

+++
collapsibleMenu = true

[_build]
  render = 'never'
+++

---
_build:
  render: never
collapsibleMenu: true
---

{
   "_build": {
      "render": "never"
   },
   "collapsibleMenu": true
}