Menus, navigation, & taxonomy: How it all works (VIDEO)

This training explains how menus, navigation, and taxonomy work together in HarvardSites. Understanding this will help you make sense of why some pages are structured, while others update automatically. 

Let’s take a look at a typical HarvardSites page. The structure of this page is created using menus. Menus define what pages exist, how they're organized, and where they appear in navigation. This page is fully controlled by menus.

But when we go to the All Publications page, something changes. Notice the section navigation is gone. This type of page is a Listing Page. It behaves completely differently. Instead of manually placing content, you get filters, sorting, and automatically generated results. Those results come from tagged content. Listing Pages are powered by taxonomy. Taxonomy is how content is tagged and organized behind the scenes, using things like publication type or year. To learn how to apply these tags, see the Apply Taxonomy Terms page in the user guide.

A Listing Page displays dynamically generated content. Once content is tagged using taxonomy, the system does the work. It automatically organizes content, builds listings, and keeps everything up to date. To learn how these pages work, see the listing page in the user guide. Navigation is how it appears to site visitors.

A common mistake is trying to manage everything through menus. If you're manually updating lists of content, that's usually a sign that you need taxonomy instead. If you're ready to go deeper, see adding content to menus, applying taxonomy terms, and Listing Pages in the Harvard Sites Drupal User Guide. Use menus for navigation, taxonomy for organization, and Listing Pages for dynamic content. Follow these patterns to maintain structure and avoid issues. Happy building in HarvardSites!