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 automatically in the Navigation Panel. For this tip, you will learn about the two basic navigation options — vertical or horizontal — and decide which one is best for your website. You will find all the information you need at the bottom of this page; if you have any questions (the navigation panel can be a little confusing at first), just let me know.

Here is the information you can use to choose your navigation style and make sure your pages are working correctly:

Vertical or Horizontal. First, you need to decide what style of navigation you want. There are two basic styles to choose from:

• Vertical Navigation. The default navigation option is a sidebar navigation box which lists the pages vertically. You can choose whether this vertical panel appears on the left side of your screen (default) or whether you want to have it on the right side. To choose right-side navigation, click the More button, choose Edit Site Layout, and then click on the Pencil (Edit) button on the Sidebar and choose "on the right."
• Horizontal Navigation. This is a navigation bar that goes across the top of your page, just below the top panel. This is a great choice if you have just four or five pages in your site and if your page titles are very short. To turn on horizontal navigation, click the More button, choose Edit Site Layout, and then click on the Horizontal Navigation button; you will see your horizontal navigation bar appear. Then, click on the Sidebar button to make it disappear, leaving you with just the horizontal navigation.
• Manual Navigation. You can also just disable both the sidebar navigation and also disable the horizontal navigation. If you do that, you need to create the links manually yourself by adding links to each story from the coverpage.

Navigation Contents. Google Sites will attempt to add content to the navigation panel for you automatically but there are lots of reasons you may need to make changes to the automatic navigation. For example, you might have some pages you have created but which are not yet ready for visitors, so you would need to remove them from the panel. You might want a different title to appear in the navigation panel, shorter than the full title that displays on the page. You might also need to change the order in which the pages are listed. You can do all of these things through the "Configure Navigation" menu.

Horizontal Navigation: To open the Configure Navigation menu with a horizontal navigation bar, click the More button, choose Edit Site Layout, and then click anywhere on your horizontal navigation bar to edit the bar and the menu will pop up.

Vertical Navigation: To open the Configure Navigation menu with a vertical navigation bar, click the More button, choose Edit Site Layout, and then hover over the Sidebar, which will cause the Navigation link to appear; click on the link to edit the Navigation: 

When you see the menu, make sure you UNCHECK "automatically organize my navigation" - the rest of the menu will not appear until you uncheck that box.

After you uncheck the automatic organization box, you will see the entire menu:

Here are all the things you can do with this menu:

• Add Page. To add a page to the listing, click on the blue add page link. This is how you add pages from your Google Site to the navigation listing.
  NOTE: Another way to add page(s) to the sidebar is to go to the page that is missing from the sidebar, and then choose More, Page Settings, and check the box that says "show this page in the sidebar."
• Move Page. For the pages that appear in the panel, you can move them up or down, as well as indent or outdent them. Just click on the title of a page; this will cause it to be highlighted. You can then choose the button - up, down, in, out - from the right side of the menu to perform the selected operation.
• Remove Page. You can remove a page from the sidebar by clicking on the title of a page; this will cause it to be highlighted. You can then choose the X (delete) button to remove it from the sidebar. This will not cause it to be removed from the site; it will just remove it from the navigation panel. Another way to remove a page from the navigation panel is to go to the page that you want to remove, then choose More, Page Settings, and then uncheck the box that says "show this page in the sidebar."
• Change Page Title. By default, the page title shown in the navigation is identical to the page title you have typed into the content box on the page itself. If you want a different title to appear in the navigation, use this trick: open the page of the site in a different browser tab, copy the address, and then click the add URL link to add your site page as if it were an external page. This will allow you to display whatever page title you want.
• Title display. Choose to display the title of the navigation panel or not (check or uncheck title display). If you choose to display the title, you can use the default "Navigation" as the label or type in something else.
• Sitemap display. You can choose to display a sitemap link in the navigation or not. (I would recommend you uncheck this option; you should list all your active site pages in the navigation panel, so there is no need for a sitemap.)
• Recent site activity display. You can choose to share information about recent site activity or not. (I would recommend you uncheck this option; it has no real use for your Storybook.) 

Make sure you click OK at the bottom of the menu configuration panel to save your changes!