Perfecting Menus, Paths and Breadcrumbs

Jody Hamilton

CTO of Zivtech

Drupal architect, developer, site builder, trainer and contributor

Jody Lynn @ drupal.org

@JodyHamilton

Definitions

• Menus
• Paths
• Breadcrumbs

A Menu is a Tree

One site : One tree

One page : One position

The Menu Tree vs Menu Displays

Common Menu Displays

• Main Menu
• Footer Menu
• User Menu
• Organic Groups Menus

Canonical Menu Positions & Core Problems

One page, one path, one breadcrumb, multiple menu items?

Canonical: We can have more than one but one is special

Menu Block

Menu Hall of Shame

• Hand-made menus
• Crowded menus
• Too many menus

Menu Contrib

• Admin menu
• Menu Position

A path is an address

URLs are part of your

• UI
• Design (though missing from most mockups)
• Navigation
• Self-respect

A path should be RESTful

"Clean" & Human-readable is not enough

• stateless
• hackable
• unique

For stateless paths, remember a page <> a node

Canonical Paths

Drupal 8 has working canonical paths!

https://www.drupal.org/node/1160764

Paths are also more stateless in D8

Pathauto Mastery

• Pages: [node:menu-link:parent:url:path]/[node:title]
• Event: events/[node:title]
• Bio: people/[node:title]

Change pathauto updating settings on launch

Path Contrib Modules

• Pathauto
• Redirect
• Linkit
• Pathologic

Paths Hall of Shame

• Javascript-only links
• Separate mobile sites
• Unhackable paths

Breadcrumbs

A human-readable path

"the children find that birds have eaten the crumbs and they are lost in the woods"

Breadcrumbs in Drupal 7

Based on menu positions. But menu positions have no system canonicalness.

Many contrib modules to help:

• Custom breadcrumbs
• Menu position
• Menu breadcrumb
• Crumbs
• Hansel breadcrumbs
• Path Breadcrumbs

• Breadcrumbs by Path

Use Breadcrumbs by Path or Menu Trail by Path

Breadcrumbs in Drupal 8

http://www.palantir.net/blog/d8ftw-breadcrumbs-work

Breadcrumbs are now path-based!

Bear Install Profile

Questions