The header area is displayed at the top of every page. It contains site-wide components like the logo, top utility menu, top level menu and search bar.
Site Logo
The site logo is displayed in the top left of the header. It acts as a link to the homepage. Pick the image you would like to use in the "Site Logo" picker in the subsite configuration.
Top Utility Menu
The top utility menu is used to hold links to important pages on the site. These could include links to accessibility information or the site's login article.
The items displayed in this menu are links to the child articles of the article selected in the "Top utilities article" picker in the subsite configuration. The top utility article is normally turned off so that it doesn't appear in the site navigation and breadcrumb.
Care should be taken over the number of articles that appear here. The menu will wrap onto further rows to accommodate a large number of items.
Top Search Box
The top search box allows users to search for content on the site. The box contains the default placeholder text "Find...".
If search suggestions are enabled, up to four content suggestions are shown once three characters have been typed into the box. This list of suggestions is updated as further characters are entered. Selecting a suggestion will take the user directly to that content.
A search will be performed using the content of the box if a user presses the enter key or clicks on the search icon.
When a user performs a search, the results are displayed on an article using the search template. Pick your site's main search article using the article picker in the subsite configuration.
For full details of the search functionality, see the Search Template article.
Site Alert
Beneath the main header content an optional site alert can be displayed. If enabled this alert will appear on every page of the site.
To turn the alert on, select an article in the "Site Alert article" picker in the Subsite Settings. To turn it off, remove the article.
The alert always displays the heading of the article you've picked. If the article has summary or introductory text, this will appear below the heading, and the heading will act as a link to the full article. If the article doesn't have summary or intro text, the body text will be output (which can include inlines) and the heading won't act as a link.
Top Level Menu
Beneath the main header an optional top level menu can be displayed. If enabled it will appear on every page of the site. The items in this menu can be either the direct child articles of the home page, or selected in the site's configuration.
All menu items use article headings, which can be overridden with alternate link text as normal.
Top Level Menu - Standard
Each item in the standard menu acts as a direct link to that article. Any number of items can appear in this mode, with the menu wrapping onto further rows as needed.
The image at the top of this page shows a standard menu with five items.
Top Level Menu - Extended
In extended mode only the first six articles in the top level menu appear as menu items.
If a menu item has child articles, an arrow appears to the right. Clicking the item opens a sub-menu which displays the first six child articles in a single row. If these child articles have child articles of their own, an arrow will appear next to them. On click the item expands, revealing the first four of those child articles. The items in these final lists always act as links to the relevant article.
If a top level menu item has more than six child articles a link to "View all..." items in the menu is displayed. If child articles in the sub-menu lists have more than four child articles, a link to "View all..." is displayed at the bottom of the list.
Where menu items don't have child articles they act as direct links to the relevant article.
For example:
In the screenshot above, the top row of menu items are the child articles of the homepage. They all have child articles of their own so have an arrow next to them.
"System Administration" has been clicked, expanding the menu and revealing its first six child articles.
"iCM Management" has been clicked, revealing its first four child articles.
Because "System Administration" has more than six child articles, there's a link to "View all System Administration" at the very bottom of the menu.
Because "iCM Management" has more than four child articles, there's a link to "View all iCM Management".
The "Data Management" article has child articles, so an arrow appears next to it. Clicking that menu item would reveal a list of child articles.
The "Autoconfig", "Emails Sent by iCM" "External Content Search" and "iCM Single-Sign-On" menu items don't have any child articles, so don't have arrows and instead act as links to those articles.
We recommend that menu items like "System Administration" and "iCM Management" use the List template. This is so that when the "View all" links are followed, they will display all of their child articles in a list.
Configuring the Menu
There are three settings and two styles for the top level menu, all found in the subsite configuration.
Setting
The setting drop-down lets you turn the top menu off, create a menu using the direct child articles of the site's homepage, or create a custom menu from articles you choose. If you pick "On (Selected Articles)" a new field will appear which lets you pick articles from anywhere in the site and control the order they appear in.
Style
The top menu has two styles. The Standard style displays a simple list of articles, the Extended style generates an expanding menu from the chosen articles, as described above. The standard style can display any number of articles in it, the extended style will only display the first six articles.
Extended Style Colours
The colours of the items in the extended menu can be changed using iCM metadata. The subsite configuration's "Menu style modifier property" lets you pick a metadata property. The values held in this property can be related to articles and will be output in as BEM modifiers in the menu source that can be targeted by the site's skin.
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