---
layout: default
title: Navigation Structure
nav_order: 5
---

# Navigation Structure
{: .no_toc }

## Table of contents
{: .no_toc .text-delta }

1. TOC
{:toc}

---

## Main navigation

The main navigation for your Just the Docs site is on the left side of the page at large screens and on the top (behind a tap) on small screens. The main navigation can be structured to accommodate a multi-level menu system (pages with children and grandchildren).

By default, all pages will appear as top level pages in the main nav unless a parent page is defined (see [Pages with Children](#pages-with-children)).

---

## Ordering pages

To specify a page order, use the `nav_order` variable in your pages' YAML front matter.

#### Example
{: .no_toc }
```yaml
---
layout: default
title: Customization
nav_order: 4
---
```

---

## Excluding pages

For specific pages that you do not wish to include in the main navigation, e.g. a 404 page or a landing page. Use the `nav_exclude: true` parameter in the YAML front matter for that page.

#### Example
{: .no_toc }
```yaml
---
layout: default
title: 404
nav_exclude: true
---
```

---

## Pages with children

Sometimes you will want to create a page with many children (a section). First, it is recommended that you keep pages that are related in a directory together... For example, in these docs, we keep all of the written documentation in the `./docs` directory and each of the sections in subdirectories like `./docs/ui-components` and `./docs/utilities`. This gives is an organization like:

```
+-- ..
|-- (Jekyll files)
|
|-- docs
|   |-- ui-components
|   |   |-- ui-components.md  (parent page)
|   |   |-- buttons.md
|   |   |-- code.md
|   |   |-- labels.md
|   |   |-- tables.md
|   |   +-- typography.md
|   |
|   |-- utilities
|   |   |-- utilities.md      (parent page)
|   |   |-- color.md
|   |   |-- layout.md
|   |   |-- responsive-modifiers.md
|   |   +-- typography.md
|   |
|   |-- (other md files, pages with no children)
|   +-- ..
|
|-- (Jekyll files)
+-- ..
```

On the parent pages, add 2 YAML front matter variables:
-  `has_children: true` (tells us that this a parent page)
-  `permalink:` set this to the site directories that the contains the pages

#### Example
{: .no_toc }
```yaml
---
layout: default
title: UI Components
nav_order: 2
has_children: true
permalink: /docs/ui-components
---
```

Here we're setting up the UI Components landing page that is available at `/docs/ui-components`, it has children and is ordered second in the main nav.

### Child pages
{: .text-gamma }

On child pages, simply set the `parent:` YAML front matter to whatever the parent's page title is and set a nav order (this number is now scoped within the section).

#### Example
{: .no_toc }
```yaml
---
layout: default
title: Buttons
parent: UI Components
nav_order: 2
---
```

### Auto-generating Table of Contents

By default, all pages with children will automatically append a Table of Contents which lists the child pages after the parent page's content. To disable this auto Table of Contents, set it to false on the parent page's YAML front matter.

#### Example
{: .no_toc }
```yaml
---
layout: default
title: UI Components
nav_order: 2
has_children: true
has_toc: false
permalink: /docs/ui-components
---
```

The Buttons page appears a child of UI Components and appears second in the UI Components section.

### Children with children
{: .text-gamma }

Child pages can also have children (grand children). This is achieved by using a similar pattern on the child and grand child pages.

1. Add the `has_children` attribute to the child
1. Add the `parent` and `grand_parent` attribute to the grandchild

#### Example
{: .no_toc }

```yaml
---
layout: default
title: Buttons
parent: UI Components
nav_order: 2
has_children: true
---
```

```yaml
---
layout: default
title: Buttons Child Page
parent: Buttons
grand_parent: UI Components
nav_order: 1
---
```

Would create the following navigation structure:

```
+-- ..
|
|-- UI Components
|   |-- ..
|   |
|   |-- Buttons
|   |   |-- Button Child Page
|   |
|   |-- ..
|
+-- ..
```

---

## Auxiliary Navigation

To add a auxiliary navigation item to your site (in the upper right on all pages), add it to the `aux_nav` [configuration option]({{ site.baseurl }}{% link docs/configuration.md %}#aux-nav) in your site's `_config.yml` file.

#### Example
{: .no_toc }

```yml
# Aux links for the upper right navigation
aux_links:
"Just the Docs on GitHub":
    - "//github.com/pmarsceill/just-the-docs"
```

---

## In-page navigation with Table of Contents

To generate a Table of Contents on your docs pages, you can use the `{:toc}` method from Kramdown, immediately after an `<ol>` in markdown. This will automatically generate an ordered list of anchor links to various sections of page based on headings and heading levels. There may be occasions where you're using a heading and you don't want it to show up in the TOC, to skip a particular heading use the `{: .no_toc }` CSS class.

#### Example
{: .no_toc }

```markdown
# Navigation Structure
{: .no_toc }

## Table of contents
{: .no_toc .text-delta }

1. TOC
{:toc}
```

This example skips the page name heading (`#`) from the TOC, as well as the heading for the Table of Contents itself (`##`) because it is redundant, followed by the table of contents itself.