Using Joomla

Chapter 7. Menus

The importance of a good menu structure is key to any website. If users can’t quickly and logically find the information they want, they’ll go somewhere else. When you’re building a website you should spend the extra time to make sure the menu structure (or site map) is just right. On smaller sites, the site map pretty much builds itself because the structure is simple. On larger sites with thousands of articles, time invested up front to get things organized in the best possible way will save a lot of time and headache down the line and also provide for a better user experience.

Joomla makes it easy to organize your information with its menu system. You can create an unlimited number of menus and menu items as needed, with the ability to nest those menu items within each other to go as deep as you want.

Note

Some of you are probably shaking your head at the previous unlimited statement. Yes, we’re just like you in that we question everything. The truth is that it’s not technically unlimited. The maximum number of menu items is actually 4,294,967,295. With a number that big, we think it’s safe to say that it is virtually unlimited.

Menu Structure Versus Content Structure

In Chapter 5, you learned about how content is organized in Joomla. Some users expect that when you create a hierarchy of sections, categories, and articles, they will automatically be translated to a menu. This is not the case. Content structure and menu structure are separate in organization ...