GoogleSites: Adjusting the Google Site Navigation Panel

One of the big advantages of Google Sites is that it will maintain the navigation for you, so that all your webpages are listed in the Navigation Panel. As you accumulate more and more pages, you will probably want to change the order in which the pages are listed.

Alternative: Manual navigation. You can also choose to suppress the Navigation Panel and create all your own navigation on the homepage with links that you add manually to each page. If you want to hide the navigation panel and create all your links manually, go to More Actions (upper right-hand button), Manage Site, Site Appearance: Site Layout, and uncheck the Side Panel option. Click Save Changes to save your changes.

Here is how to adjust the contents of your Navigation Panel:

STEP ONE: Click on Edit Sidebar at the bottom of your sidebar. Or, if you prefer, click the "More" button in the upper right-hand corner, and choose "Manage Site," and then choose "Site Layout" from the left-hand panel.

STEP TWO: Next, you need to click on the tiny Edit link underneath where it says Navigation:

STEP THREE: You will then see a window pops up which allows you to do all kinds of things to adjust the navigation panel in the sidebar.

Click on the page you want to move up or down, in or out, or delete. This will highlight the page with a blue bar. Then, click on the icon to either move or delete the page.

Title: You can choose to NOT display the title of the sidebar; just uncheck the "Display title" box.

Automatic: Do NOT automatically organize the navigation. You need to UNCHECK this box to be able to adjust your navigation. To move a a page, click on that page so that it is highlighted, and then use the UP arrow to move it up (press as many times as you need to) or the DOWN arrow to move that page down.

Add Page: If one of your pages is not listed, then you can use the Add Page link to add  pages to the navigation list.

Sitemap: You can choose to NOT display a link to the sitemap; just uncheck the "Sitemap" box.

Note: If you want to change the name of the pages displayed in the navigation panel, just  follow these instructions for changing the Page Title. You cannot do that here; you have to edit the page itself to change the title. When you edit the page and change the title, it automatically updates the display in the navigation panel.

STEP FOUR: When you are done, click OK at the bottom of the window to save your changes.