Menu Access in drupal 7

Menu on a website is collection of links which allow visitors to navigate through website. Menus are important aspect of the website, as it not only allow vistiors to navigate through website, but also decides the design and layout of the website.

In the Drupal CMS, menu module provides an interface which allow administrator to manage the menus of the website. Each menu in the site generates a block with same name in the admin section. Administer can display the menu block in any section of the website.

By default, Drupal provides three menus in the admin

• Management: This menu contains the links for administrative tasks only.
• Main menu: This menu is used to many sites to show the major actions of the site, often in top navigation bar of the website.
• Navigation: This menu contains the links, which are added automatically by modules, intended for site visitors.
• User menu: This menu contains the link related to user's account.

In many websites, we need to display the navigation links in other section of the website. For example, in some website, we display the links in the footer section of the website, to allow visitors to navigate to inner pages. Drupal allow administer to create a new menu and manage th e links of menus from the admin section of the site.

We can also add the menu items for the menus while editing or creating a new content in the admin. We need to only configure menus with content type in the admin.

Creating a new menu:

• Go to administration -> structure -> menus
• Click on “Add menu” in the top section of the page.
• In the new window, a menu form will be generating. In this form, add the below field
  Title: Title of the menus Description: Description of the menus. It’s not necessary that we add description for the menu but it help us to understand the functionality of the menu in the list of menu section in admin.
• Click on submit button and new menu will be create.

Add a link to a menu:

• Go to administer -> structure -> menus. It will display the list of menus available in site. In each row of the menu list, there are actions link for the menu.
• Click on “add link”. It will redirect to menu link form.
• In the form, fill up the below fields
  Menu link Title: title of the menu item. Path: The path for this menu item. Path can be either internal Drupal path such as “node/nid”, path of views page, path generated by any module, path generated by panels or external URL as “http://www.technospiders.com”. You can add “” to link menu item to front page of the site or “node” to display the list of all nodes. Enabled: By default, this is checked. If this will not checked for menu item, menu item will not be display in the site. Show as expanded: If there is submenu item of the menu item and this checkbox is checked, menu item will always display as expended. Parent link: It will select other menu item as parent item of the menu item. The maximum depth for a link and all its children is 9. So, if some menu item has exceeded more than this limit, it will not be available as parents. Weight: This field is use to sort the menu item.
• Click on “save” button to save the menu item.

Edit a menu link item:

• Go to administer -> structure -> menus.
• Click on “list link” for the menus which contains that menu item which we want to edit.
• Now, it will display the list of menu item available for the menus. Click on “edit” link in a row of menu item which we want to edit. It will display the menu item edit form.
• Edit the information in the form and save the form.

Delete a menu link item:

• Go to administer -> structure -> menus.
• Click on “list link” for the menus which contains that menu item which we want to edit.
• Now, it will display the list of menu item available for the menus. Click on “delete” link in a row of menu item which we want to delete.
• It will redirect to confirmation screen to delete the menu item. Click on “confirm” button to delete the menu item or click on “cancel” link to cancel it.

Configuration of content type with menus:

Drupal allow administer to link menu item with any content while editing or creating new content. By default, we can only add menu item to main menu of Drupal, but we can configure other custom menus which we create in admin with content type.

• Go to administration -> structure -> content type
• It will display the list of available content type in the Drupal. Edit the any content type which you want to configure with menu.
• Click on menu settings tab in for new page. It will display the available menus as checkbox. Checked the menus which you want to configure with content type and save the content type.

Adding menu items using node edit page:

• Go to administration -> content. It will display the list of content in the site. To add a new content, click on “add content” link in top of page or edit any content of content type which you have configure with your menus.
• In the node edit form, under the Menu settings, check the checkbox “provide a menu link”. It will display the menu form to add menu link title and description and allow selecting parent menu item.