hacks-guide-minimal-mistakes-theme/docs/_docs/07-navigation.md

title	permalink	excerpt	last_modified_at	toc
Navigation	/docs/navigation/	Instructions on how to customize the main navigation and enabling breadcrumb links.	2018-03-20T15:59:40-04:00	true

Customize site navigational links through a Jekyll data file.

Masthead

The masthead links use a "priority plus" design pattern. Meaning, show as many navigation items that will fit horizontally with a toggle to reveal the rest.

To define these links add titles and URLs under the main key in _data/navigation.yml:

main:
  - title: "Quick-Start Guide"
    url: /docs/quick-start-guide/
  - title: "Posts"
    url: /year-archive/
  - title: "Categories"
    url: /categories/
  - title: "Tags"
    url: /tags/
  - title: "Pages"
    url: /page-archive/
  - title: "Collections"
    url: /collection-archive/
  - title: "External Link"
    url: https://google.com

Which will give you a responsive masthead similar to this:

![priority plus masthead animation]({{ "/assets/images/mm-priority-plus-masthead.gif" | relative_url }})

Optionally, you can add a description key per title in the main key. This description will show up like a tooltip, when the user hovers over the link on a desktop browser.

ProTip: Put the most important links first so they're always visible and not hidden behind the menu toggle. {: .notice--info}

Breadcrumbs (beta)

Enable breadcrumb links to help visitors better navigate deep sites. Because of the fragile method of implementing them they don't always produce accurate links reliably. For best results:

1. Use a category based permalink structure e.g. permalink: /:categories/:title/
2. Manually create pages for each category or use a plugin like jekyll-archives to auto-generate them. If these pages don't exist breadcrumb links to them will be broken.

![breadcrumb navigation example]({{ "/assets/images/mm-breadcrumbs-example.jpg" | relative_url }})

breadcrumbs: true  # disabled by default

Breadcrumb start link text and separator character can both be changed in _data/ui-text.yml.

breadcrumb_home_label : "Home"
breadcrumb_separator  : "/"

For breadcrumbs that resemble something like Start > Blog > My Awesome Post you'd apply these settings:

breadcrumb_home_label : "Start"
breadcrumb_separator  : ">"

Custom sidebar navigation menu

See the [sidebars documentation]({{ "/docs/layouts/#custom-sidebar-navigation-menu" | relative_url }}) for information on setting up a custom navigation menu.