Testing navigation menus

Once you have customized your navigation menu appearance, created navigation menus, and assigned them to your navigation buttons, you will want to test them.  To do so, simply go to the front end of your site.  To test your navigation menus:

1. Roll over each navigation button and make sure the correct navigation pops up.

2. Make sure you like the way the colors look with the rest of your site.

3. Roll over individual menu items.  Make sure they are easy to read, and that it's obvious what menu item you are currently on (because of a color change or something similar).

4. Click each separate menu item and make sure it takes you to the correct page.

5. Make sure you have remembered to make external links (links to other web sites) pop open in a separate window (assuming you wish them to).

IMPORTANT: If your site is in setup and does not have permanent graphics yet, your navigation menus will not appear until your permanent graphics have been added.

Keep in mind that navigation menus will not necessarily work on older browsers, and that if you have form elements, Javascript, Flash, Java, or other types of elements on a page, you may get some unexpected interaction between the two.  For example, navigation menus will sometimes appear beneath a pulldown box on a page, rather than on top of it.

Remember that navigation menus are an alternative to right or top navigations within a section.  The links you put in a navigation can also be made as a right or top navigation on the page itself.  You can use both techniques together if you wish, or if you or your members find that navigation menus are not what you want, you can always use right or top navigations instead.  See Creating a right navigation and Creating a top navigation for more information.