General – Maintaining Menus

Keeping your menus short and neat is important to ensure that the appearance and usability of your shop is optimised. To avoid long and messy menus, especially horizontal menus that overflow onto new lines, we recommend that you:

• Keep Page and Category names as clear and concise as possible.
• Never use ALL CAPS for page or product names to achieve captialisation in menus – use the method described in How do I capitalise my menu text?.
• Reorganise extensive Product Categories into minimal Parent Categories with extensive Sub-categories.
• Move Page links to the Sub-page, Footer and Category menu where applicable.
• Reduce menu font size if required (to condense menus) – see How do I edit my Big Cartel theme fonts?.
• Reduce menu item spacing if required (to condense menus) – see How do I control the spacing between my menu items?.

Read on for complete details on creating and managing your menus.

Special Menu Items

Special menu items link to the major locations of your web space, i.e. your home page (Home), your products page (View All) and your web site (Back to Site). These items can be edited, moved amongst your main menu area or hidden as required – refer to:

• How do I add a link from my Big Cartel shop back to my web site or blog?
• How do I remove or edit the View All and Home links in my Big Cartel theme menus?
• How should I assign the Home, Site and View All links in my menus?

Page Menu

The page menu includes links to the contact and custom pages of your shop (e.g. about, lookbook, etc.). As you add custom pages they will be automatically listed in this menu – refer How do I add a page to my Big Cartel shop?

You can add as many pages as you like, however if you include too many links in this menu it will start to look cluttered and detract from your shop’s appearance. In this case, we suggest moving some of your page links to a sub-page menu or to the Category or Footer menu (see below).

Sub-page Menus

These menus are created by grouping one or more pages under a “parent” page – refer How do I control the page navigation in my Big Cartel shop?

Category Menu

This menu represents the product categories of your shop (e.g. shirts, pants, etc.). As you create product categories they will be automatically listed in this menu – refer How do I add a product category to my Big Cartel shop?

You can add as many categories as you like, however if you include too many links in this menu it will start to look cluttered and detract from your shop’s appearance. In this case, we suggest reorganising your products into sub-categories (see below).

Review the Products & Categories support section for more details, including extended category controls for creating automatic and hidden categories.

You can also set the contact and any custom pages of your shop to be displayed in your shop category menu, as detailed in the support article How do I control the page navigation in my Big Cartel shop?

It is also possible to hide your category menu on non-product pages via custom styles – for example, you might not want your category links displayed on your Home, About Us and other custom pages. To hide your category menu in this manner, see How do I hide the category menu on non-product or other specific pages? When hiding your category menu, you should also ensure that your “View All” link is moved to your Page menu (see section Special Menu Items above) and renamed accordingly, e.g. “Products” or “Shop”.

Sub-category Menu

This menu represents the product sub-categories of your shop (e.g. shirts – long sleeve, pants – denim, etc.). As you create product sub-categories they will be automatically listed in this menu – refer How do I add a product subcategory to my Big Cartel shop?

Footer Menu

This menu represents the contact and custom pages of your shop that you have set to be displayed in your shop footer, as detailed in the support article How do I control the page navigation in my Big Cartel shop?

Artist Category Menu

This menu represents the artist categories of your shop. Artist categories provide an additional category system for your products that works independently of your standard category and sub-category system. Artist categories can be used to sort products by any single property of your choosing, e.g. artist name, product brand, record label, author, etc. – refer How do I use my artist categories?

Custom / External Links

Further custom links, like a specific product page or an external link to another site, can be added to your Page, Category and Footer menus, as detailed in the section Creating Custom or External Menu Links of the support article How do I control the page navigation in my Big Cartel shop?

Additional Reference

For more information on editing your menus, refer to other articles in the Header, Footer & Menus category.