Use the information on this page to learn how to update your site’s navigation, page URLs, and manage redirects on your site.
On this page
Any content added to a PDX.edu site must be accessible to users with disabilities and follow appropriate legal guidelines. Additional information can be found in PSU’s Digital Accessibility, Digital Privacy, and Copyright policies.
Managing your site’s navigation
There are two main ways to manage your site’s navigation: using the PSU Primary Menu or by editing a page. Whichever method you choose, you will have the following choices to make:
Menu link title: the text used in the menu for this page
Description: additional context text that appears on hover
Parent Item: determines the menu structure; <PSU Primary Menu> puts this in your top-level navigation. Choosing anything else nests this item under the selected page.
Weight: helps to reorder the menu items. Ignore this; there is an easier way to reorder your menu.
Things to note:
There are three navigation layers:
Top-level: displays in the white bar next to the search button
Secondary: displays in the drop-down menu
Third-level: displays in the drop-down menu under the secondary navigation
Your site’s top-level navigation can only be all direct links with no drop-down navigation, or all have a drop-down menu. This is an accessibility requirement. Follow the instructions for mixed navigation (both drop-down and direct links) if your site has mixed navigation.
While you can nest navigation items beyond the third level, they will all display the same as third-level navigation.
If you have secondary menu items with third-level items and secondary menu items without third-level items in a drop-down menu, the secondary items without third-level will always group together to the right of the menu.
Your top-level menu is limited by the amount of space you have. When adding pages to it, review the spacing to check if you need to rename menu link titles so it doesn't look "shoved together".
Managing redirects
Redirects are custom URLs on your site that “redirect” a person to a different URL. They’re useful for creating user-friendly URLs for pages with long clunky URLs (such as Google Docs or PDFs) or important pages and documents that frequently change URLs. This prevents you from having to find every place where the old URL was in use; instead, you just need to update the redirect.
To make a redirect:
Use the admin menu to navigate to “Configuration ￫ Search and Metadata ￫ URL Redirects”
Select "Add redirect"
Complete the form:
Path: this is the custom redirect URL. You’ll note your site URL is already added, you just need to enter the text that follows your site’s URL.
Example: the Policy Library has a redirect for the Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment Policy (pdx.edu/policies/pdhp). They entered pdhp into the Path text box.
To: this is the true destination URL.
Redirect status: Leave this as the default.
Do note that redirects sometimes take a few minutes to come into effect; wait a little bit before testing the redirect.
Managing URLs
The URLs for each of your pages default to the page title. However, you can customize the URLs for landing pages and a few other page types. If a page you’re editing has that option, you’ll notice a "URL Alias" option on the right side of the page.
Provided the page you’re editing has that option, follow these instructions to customize the URL:
Expand the URL Alias menu
Deselect “Generate automatic URL alias” - this is the option that defaults the URL to the page title.
Enter the new end to your page’s URL; this is just the text that appears after your site’s URL starting with a forward slash.
Example: you want your page titled About Us (defaulting to /about-us) to just end in “about”. You would enter /about for the URL alias.
Please note: your URL Alias cannot end with the same text as a site URL or top-level page. For example, pdx.edu/research (site) exists, as does pdx.edu/transfer-student (top-level URL). So you cannot create a custom URL that ends in /research or /transfer-student.