Beginning Drupal 8

Chapter 7 ■ Creating Menus
Clicking that link will take you directly to the page we just created, regardless of where you are on
the website.
Adding a Menu Item for an External Page
You can add links to external sites by adding a menu item. To do so, click the Manage link at the top of the
page and the Structure link in the submenu. On the Structure page, click the Menus link. On the Menus
page, click the triangle icon next to the “Edit menu” button for the Main navigation menu and select the
“Add link” option. You should now see the “Add menu link” form (see Figure 7-3). Enter a title (in this
example, I used Apress as the menu title), the link, which is the full URL to the external page to which we
want to link (in the example I used http://apress.com), ensure that the Enabled check box is checked, and
for demonstration purposes, select “Main navigation” from the “Parent link” drop-down list.
Figure 7-3. Adding a menu item for an external page
Once you’ve entered all the values, click the Save button at the bottom of the page (you may need to
scroll down to see it). Drupal then displays the complete list of items assigned to the Main navigation menu,
including the new item that we just created.
Navigate back to the homepage of your site by clicking the “Back to site” link in the admin menu. You
should now see the new menu item that you just added. Clicking that menu item will take you to the external
link that you entered when you created the menu item.
Creating a New Menu
There may be situations where you need to create additional menus beyond the standard menus created
and enabled with Drupal 8. As an example, when creating Drupal-based websites for public libraries, I am
often asked to build unique menus for each department in the library (a menu each for Adult Services, Youth
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