If all you want is a simple menu for your sections, see the ["Section Menu for Lazy Bloggers" in Menu Templates](/templates/menu-templates/#section-menu-for-lazy-bloggers).
* Create menu entries without being attached to any content
* Distinguish active element (and active branch)
## What is a Menu in Hugo?
A **menu** is a named array of menu entries accessible by name via the [`.Site.Menus` site variable][sitevars]. For example, you can access your site's `main` menu via `.Site.Menus.main`.
{{% note "Menus on Multilingual Sites" %}}
If you make use of the [multilingual feature](/content-management/multilingual/), you can define language-independent menus.
{{% /note %}}
A menu entry has the following properties (i.e., variables) available to it:
`.URL`
: string
`.Name`
: string
`.Menu`
: string
`.Identifier`
: string
`.Pre`
: template.HTML
`.Post`
: template.HTML
`.Weight`
: int
`.Parent`
: string
`.Children`
: Menu
Note that menus also have the following functions available as well:
`.HasChildren`
: boolean
Additionally, there are some relevant functions available to menus on a page:
`.IsMenuCurrent`
: (menu string, menuEntry *MenuEntry ) boolean
`.HasMenuCurrent`
: (menu string, menuEntry *MenuEntry) boolean
## Add content to menus
Hugo allows you to add content to a menu via the content's [front matter](/content-management/front-matter/).
### Simple
If all you need to do is add an entry to a menu, the simple form works well.
#### A Single Menu
```
---
menu: "main"
---
```
#### Multiple Menus
```
---
menu: ["main", "footer"]
---
```
#### Advanced
```
---
menu:
docs:
parent: 'extras'
weight: 20
---
```
## Add Non-content Entries to a Menu
You can also add entries to menus that aren’t attached to a piece of content. This takes place in your Hugo project's [`config` file][config].
Here’s an example snippet pulled from a `config.toml`:
The URLs must be relative to the context root. If the `baseURL` is `https://example.com/mysite/`, then the URLs in the menu must not include the context root `mysite`. Using an absolute URL will overide the baseURL. If the value used for `URL` in the above example is `https://subdomain.example.com/`, the output will be `https://subdomain.example.com`.
{{% /note %}}
## Nesting
All nesting of content is done via the `parent` field.
The parent of an entry should be the identifier of another entry. The identifier should be unique (within a menu).
The following order is used to determine an Identifier:
`.Name > .LinkTitle > .Title`
This means that `.Title` will be used unless `.LinkTitle` is present, etc. In practice, `.Name` and `.Identifier` are only used to structure relationships and therefore never displayed.
In this example, the top level of the menu is defined in your [site `config` file][config]). All content entries are attached to one of these entries via the `.Parent` field.
## Render Menus
See [Menu Templates](/templates/menu-templates/) for information on how to render your site menus within your templates.
