This article details the control of custom page and link items within your shop menus. For an overview of all shop menus items (including product categories, etc.) refer to How do I add links to my shop menus? (An overview of all Aarcade menu areas)

Included in this article are instructions for:

1. Excluding Page Links
2. Moving Page Links to the Category Menu
3. Moving Page Links to the Footer
4. Moving Page Links to a Sub-page Menu
5. Creating Custom or External Menu Links

Custom Page Order

Your Big Cartel Page links will be shown in the same order you add your custom pages. You can change this order in your Customize design > Pages () admin area by clicking the move icon () next to the page titles and dragging and dropping the page to a new location in the list.

You can further manipulate your page navigation menu by using Advanced Page Navigation Management as described in the following sections.

Add Custom Pages

Add new custom pages as required, per support article How do I add a page to my Big Cartel shop?, before editing page names for page navigation control.

Links to your custom pages will be automatically displayed in your page menu by default.

You can then apply name editing for Advanced Page Navigation Management without affecting your page URL.

How Advanced Page Navigation Management Works

Aarcade’s Advanced Page Navigation Management allows you to exclude page links from your shop navigation, as well as move page links from your page menu to your category, footer and sub-page menus.

This control is achieved by simply adding a prefix to your page name AFTER it has been successfully created and saved.

Applicable Pages

Navigate to your Customize design > Pages () admin section to view your page list. Aarcade’s Advanced Page Navigation Management can be applied to any of these pages.

Page Navigation Management can also be applied to the Contact page in the Customize design > Advanced () admin section. Do not apply this system to any other core theme pages in this section, i.e. Layout, Home, Products, etc.

The correct pages to be used with Advanced Page Navigation Management - includes the Contact theme page

Excluding Page Links

Make sure you have created your page and saved it with a standard page name first – see Save Your Standard Page Name First above.

To exclude a page link from your shop navigation menus:

1. Click the title of the page you wish to exclude
2. Add the prefix “x ” to the page name (note the space after the x)
3. Click the Done button at the top of the customisation area
4. Click the Save link at the top of the customisation area

Excluding the Portfolio page link by adding the prefix 'x ' to the page name

Moving Page Links to the Category Menu

Make sure you have created your page and saved it with a standard page name first – see Save Your Standard Page Name First above.

To move a page link to your shop’s category navigation menu:

1. Click the title of the page you wish to exclude
2. Add the prefix “c ” to the page name (note the space after the c)
3. Click the Done button at the top of the customisation area
4. Click the Save link at the top of the customisation area

Moving the Blog page link to the category menu by adding the prefix 'c' to the page name

Page links moved to the category menu will be displayed after category links by default. However, you can set the page links to display before the category links via the {{ NAVIGATION OPTIONS }} section of your primary custom options – refer How do I use the Custom Options for my Big Cartel theme? In this case, the custom option setting would appear as follows:

{% assign page_before_cat_items = 'yes' %}

Moving Page Links to the Footer

Make sure you have created your page and saved it with a standard page name first – see Save Your Standard Page Name First above.

To move a page link to your shop’s footer navigation menu:

1. Click the title of the page you wish to exclude
2. Add the prefix “f ” to the page name (note the space after the f)
3. Click the Done button at the top of the customisation area
4. Click the Save link at the top of the customisation area

Moving the FAQ page link to the footer by adding the prefix 'f ' to the page name

Moving Page Links to a Sub-page Menu

Make sure you have created your page and saved it with a standard page name first – see Save Your Standard Page Name First above.

To move a page link to a sub-page navigation menu:

1. Click the title of the page you wish to move
2. Add the prefix “x subpage PARENTNAME ” to the page name (note the space after the x subpage PARENTNAME ) – you will need to replace PARENTNAME with the name of the page you wish to assign as the parent
3. Click the Done button at the top of the customisation area
4. Click the Save link at the top of the customisation area

In the following example, we wish to make a sub-page menu under our About Us page. Our prefix therefore becomes “x subpage About Us “.

Moving the Press page to a sub-page menu under the About Us page

We can then continue to add pages to the About Us sub-page menu as needed:

Multiple pages added to the About Us sub-page menu

Note that we could now move the About Us parent and sub-page menu to the the category menu by simply adding the “c ” prefix to the About Us page, as described in a previous section of this article. You do not need to (and should not) add the “c ” prefix to the sub-page titles.

Creating Custom or External Menu Links

For releases prior to 6, refer to How do I add custom links to my Big Cartel theme menus?

To add custom links to your menus, such as a specific product page or an external link to another site:

1. Create a new custom page
2. Title the page with the prefix “##” and the text you wish to use for your link, e.g. “##Google Home Page” (do not include a space between the double hash and the start of the text)
3. Enter the URL for your link into the page content, e.g. “http://www.google.com”
4. If you would like your link to open in a new window add the suffix “##nw” to your URL, e.g. “http://www.google.com##nw”
5. Click the Done button at the top of the customisation area
6. Click the Save link at the top of the customisation area

For example, to add a link called “Photography” to our page menu that opens our Flickr photo stream in a new window:

Adding a Photography link to the Flickr photo stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/browncardigan/

Note the URL is the ONLY content in the page, and in this case we have added the “##nw” suffix to force the link to open in a new window:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/browncardigan/##nw

You can also link to a product within your store. For example, you may wish to have a link called “Gift Wrapping” in your category menu that links to a product in your shop for gift wrapping services:

Adding a link to the Gift Wrapping product page in the Category menu

Note that the double hash prefix is treated as part of the page name, so you can apply the other navigation control prefixes (detailed in the previous sections of this support article) before the double hash as required. In this example, we have applied the “c ” prefix that moves the link to the category menu.

c ##Gift Wrapping

Also, when linking within your shop, you can use relative links instead of absolute links (i.e. you do not need to include the http://myshop.bigcartel.com part of the URL). In this example, instead of:

http://myshop.bigcartel.com/product/gift-wrapping

we have used:

/product/gift-wrapping