The direct links page is the place that you can add links to your main menu bar to pages and documents that are not created in the content management system.

Remember these are for links that go on the menu bar only. 

Click on Create a new link

Enter your link title.

Publish is to make it visible to the public. If it is not visible it will only show up on the menu when you are logged in. However, the link will still be accessible, Examples of using this are for pages you want to link to but just not on the menu. That is addressed in more depth in the video about creating and editing pages.

Prevent search engines from following is and SEO tactic that you may or may not want and is mostly used for links going to other websites other than you own. If this is a link to a page on YOUR site you will want to leave it unchecked.

Page hierarchy is telling where to place it on the menu. The link will be directly after what you choose in the dropdown menu. The dropdown menu contains a list of all the current links. Including The top menu, some of which are parents and some that have child elements or sub menu. A menu item is a parent if it has any links underneath it in the sub menu.

That's important because you never want to place a link underneath a menu item that goes to a page.

Notice in the box where you place your URL, it says to leave it blank if it is a parent menu option. If you add a link under a top item that is a direct link somewhere, it will disable that page and only the child items will work.

When you place your link, if it is a link to a page on your site like a web group or a document contained in your uploads folder, you do not need to include the entire link, only the portion that falls after your domain name. starting with the / forward slash. For example I uploaded a pdf into the uploads in an early video and now I want to link to it.

I just need to add the slash /uploads/pdf/sample.pdf. The website will assume the rest. However if it is to an outside site you need the entire URL including the http or https://examplewebiste.com/

Click submit and you are done. If you need to edit a link, you come to this page and click edit next to the link. This will open the same page we were on and you can make your changes or delete the link.

You can move around links, including links to pages on child items. But be careful about moving or deleting parent items. A child item will lose its hierarchy if you have moved the parent and you may not see it on the menu anymore even though you did not intend for that.

If that happens, you can go to the link page or list content page,  find your link and move it to the position you want it.

That’s it for direct links.