SiteBuilder creates the navigation for you,
but this can be personalised with a few simple tweaks.
It is very important that your visitors find it as easy as possible to navigate around your site. It will depend on the template
you have chosen for your site as to whether your navigation appears above or to the side of your main page content, and how
much room you have. Luckily SiteBuilder makes it very easy to create a full set of navigation options, without taking up too
much room on the page. This is achieved by allowing you to create submenus that popup when the mouse is moved over it's
parent entry, allowing you to divide your site up into a few segments.
Creating your navigation
To edit your navigational menus, click onthe Site Organiser icon at the bottom of the page.
You will see a list of all the pages in your site. Click on Navigation Bar Properties.
Now you can re-order your navigation as you wish by dragging the boxes. If you place a box under another, slightly indented,
then it will appear as a popup when the mouse is moved over it's parent page. In the example below the "Choosing
a design" page would appear as a popup menu when the mouse is moved over the "Getting started" link.
Click Done to save your changes.
Changing the appearance of the navigation menu
You can also change the appearance of your navigation bar, although this may depend on the template you have chosen. As
a general rule you can change the colour and fonts used, or instead you can upload your own images to use.
Changing the navigation bar properties
To change the font and text colours of the navigation bar click the Change Look icon.
Choose the option to Edit your existing design.
Scroll down to the section titled Navigation. You will see several options for changing the text appearance.
- Text color for the navigation links: Change the colour of the links.
- Selected
page text color for navigation links: Change the colour of the selected page in the menu.
- Background
color of navigation submenus: Change the background colour of the popup sub menus.
- Text color
of navigation submenus: Change the colour of the text on the navigation sub menus.
- Rollover Background
color of navigation submenus: Change the background colour of the link when the mouse hovers over it. This only applies
to the popup sub menus.
- Rollover text color of navigation submenus: Change the text colour
of the link when the mouse hovers over it. This only applies to the popup sub menus.
Once you've made your changes click Done.
Using images
If you want to use your own images, rather than text, in the navigation menus you can do so. There are several benefits
to this method:
- The font you use doesn't need to be installed on the end user's machine, so you can be
a lot more creative with your menus. With a text menu you are limited to only a few fonts that are installed on all
machines.
- You can incorporate icons or images.
- You can use several colours and text effects such as drop shadow
and gradients (if your image editing software supports these).
To edit your navigational menus, click onthe Site Organiser icon at the bottom of the page.
You will see a list of all the pages in your site. Click on Navigation Bar Properties.
Click the Select button images link at the top of the page under the title.
You will now see each item in your navigation menu, along with three image options for each:
- Default
image: Select the image to display for this item.
- Rollover image: (Optional) If you
want the image to change when the mouse is hoveredover it, you can specify the image here.
- Selected
image: (Optional) If you want a different image to display for the selected page, then specify it here.
To add your own image simply click the Picture Gallery button, which will then give you the option
to select an existing picture or upload a new one. SiteBuilder only supports the following image types:
- JPEG (*.jpeg,
*.jpg)
- GIF (*.gif)
- Compressed ZIP archives (*.zip) containing yoru image(s)
When you
have made all necessary changes, click
Done.
