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).
{{% /note %}}
You can do this:
* Place content in one or many menus
* Handle nested menus with unlimited depth
* 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 %}}
See the [Menu Entry Properties][me-props] for all the variables and functions related to a menu entry.
## 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.
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] (see [Menu Entry Properties][me-props] for full details of available variables).
Here’s an example snippet pulled from a configuration file:
{{<code-togglefile="config">}}
[[menu.main]]
name = "about hugo"
pre = "<iclass='fa fa-heart'></i>"
weight = -110
identifier = "about"
url = "/about/"
[[menu.main]]
name = "getting started"
pre = "<iclass='fa fa-road'></i>"
post = "<spanclass='alert'>New!</span>"
weight = -100
url = "/getting-started/"
{{</code-toggle>}}
{{% note %}}
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 override 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.
