As an experienced AnQiCMS website operations personnel, I am well aware of the importance of a clear and efficient navigation system for user experience and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).High-quality navigation can not only help users find the information they need quickly, but also guide search engine spiders to effectively crawl website content, improving the overall performance of the website.The Anqi CMS provides an intuitive and flexible solution for creating and managing navigation menus, perfectly supporting multi-level menu structures.
Navigation design concept of Anqi CMS
The navigation management of Anqi CMS aims to provide users with highly customizable options to meet the business needs and design styles of different websites.The system understands that website navigation is not uniform, so it allows users to create various navigation categories, such as main menu, footer menu, sidebar menu, etc., making content organization more flexible.This modular design allows content operators to build the navigation system that best fits the website goals based on the actual user paths and information architecture.
Create and manage your multi-level navigation menu
Building a navigation menu in AnQi CMS is a direct and efficient task.You can find the 'Navigation Settings' feature in the 'Background Settings' area of the backend.Here, the system provides the two major modules of 'Navigation Category Management' and 'Navigation Link Settings', which are used to finely control every navigation element of the website.
Firstly, you can create different navigation categories as needed.For example, in addition to the default top navigation, you may also need a side navigation to display service items, or a footer navigation that includes legal statements and contact information.Through "Navigation Category Management", you can easily add these custom categories, and assign specific content sets to different navigation areas.
Then, it is the core "Navigation Link Settings". Here, you can add specific link items for the selected navigation category. Each link item has rich configuration options:
- Display NameThis is the text displayed to the user on the front end for the navigation link.
- Subheading name and navigation descriptionThese fields provide additional text space, which can be flexibly called in the template to achieve richer navigation expressions, such as displaying English translations or brief introductions below the main title.
- Link Type：English CMS provides three powerful link types:
- Built-in link：Directly link to the home page of the website, article model home page, product model home page, or any custom model home page, with simple operations.
- Category page link：Allow you to directly associate navigation items with created article categories, product categories, or single pages, ensuring a close integration between navigation and content structure.
- External LinkIf you need to link to other pages within the site that are not managed by CMS, or external websites, this option provides great flexibility.
- Display OrderThrough setting the size of the number, you can precisely control the arrangement position of navigation items in the menu.
Smartly implement dropdown submenus (first-level dropdown supported)
One of the core advantages of the Anqi CMS navigation system is its support for dropdown submenus.It allows you to configure a hierarchical dropdown menu for top-level navigation items, which is crucial for organizing a large amount of related content or providing more detailed options.
Display navigation flexibly in the template
On the template level, Anqi CMS throughnavListLabels provide an extremely flexible way to render the navigation menu you set up in the background. This label can retrieve all link data under the specified navigation category, including its hierarchical relationship.
Developers can utilize{% navList navs %}tags, along with template language.forloop and conditional judgments to iterate through all navigation items. When a navigation item containsNavListThe property (i.e., having a submenu) allows for nesting anotherfora loop to render its dropdown submenu. For example, you can useIsCurrentThe translation of 'auto' to 'English' is 'auto'. The original value is: '属性来判断当前页面是否对应某个导航项，从而为该项添加“active”类，提供视觉上的高亮反馈，增强用户体验。'
In addition,NavListThe items have the same field structure as the parent items, which allows for not only simple links to be displayed in the dropdown menu, but also to combinearchiveListorcategoryListThese tags, dynamically loading related articles, products, or deeper-level category lists, to achieve richer and more interactive navigation effects.For example, you can directly list popular products under a product category dropdown menu, or the subcategories of the category, which greatly enhances the practicality and information density of navigation.
Operational Strategy: Build user-friendly navigation
As an operations personnel, building a navigation menu is not just a technical configuration, but also an art.Clear navigation can effectively guide users, reduce the bounce rate, and improve conversion.
- Simplicity：It is not advisable to have too many level one navigation items, usually keeping them between 5-7, to ensure that users can grasp the main content sections of the website at a glance.
- LogicalityNavigation structure should conform to user cognitive habits and business logic, and classify content with high relevance.
- Visibility：Using the dropdown menu feature of AnQiCMS, cleverly hide secondary important information or detailed content under the main menu to maintain the interface's neatness.
- Consistency：Different navigation categories (such as main navigation, footer navigation) should maintain consistency in functionality and style to reduce the user's learning cost.
Through careful planning and utilizing the powerful functions provided by the security CMS, we can create a beautiful and efficient website navigation system for users.
Common Questions and Answers (FAQ)
1. How many levels does the navigation menu of Secure CMS support?
The navigation system of Anqi CMS supports up to two levels of menus, that is, the main menu items can have a dropdown submenu with one level.This means you can create a clear main navigation and expand a related submenu list under each main item.
2. How to set the sorting of navigation items? Is drag and drop sorting supported?
Navigation item sorting is achieved by setting the numeric value of its "Display Order" field, with smaller numbers appearing earlier.Currently, the security CMS does not support drag-and-drop sorting functionality, and you need to adjust the order by manually modifying the numbers.
3. I want to display the latest articles under specific categories in the dropdown menu, can this be done?
Entirely possible. When rendering navigation in the template, you can use the loop inside the submenu and combinearchiveListorcategoryListcontent tags according to the associatedPageIdIf it is a category link, dynamically retrieve and display the latest articles or its subcategories under the category, thereby achieving a richer content display.