Pure Blog provides a simple way to manage your front-end navigation menu, whether you want an automatic menu generated from your pages or full control over every link and its exact order.

Default Navigation Behaviour

By default, Pure Blog automatically constructs your navigation menu in the following order:

  1. Home: A link back to your homepage.
  2. Published Pages: All published pages that have “Include in navigation: Yes” enabled, sorted alphabetically by title.
  3. Custom Nav Items: Any additional links added in the Custom nav items setting (rendered in top-to-bottom order at the end of the menu).

Adding Custom Nav Items

To add custom links to your navigation (such as an RSS feed, a custom route, or an external profile link):

  1. Go to Settings → Site Settings in the admin panel.
  2. Locate the Custom nav items textarea.
  3. Enter one item per line using the Label | URL format:
RSS | /feed
Projects | /projects
GitHub | https://github.com/yourname

Custom nav items are always rendered in the exact top-to-bottom order you write them.

Replacing the Entire Menu

If you want complete control over your navigation menu — including customising the order of your pages, choosing where the Home link sits, or interweaving internal and external links — you can use the “Replace entire navigation with custom nav items” toggle.

  1. Go to Settings → Site Settings.
  2. Add all of your desired navigation links into the Custom nav items textarea in the exact order you want them to appear.
  3. Check the “Replace entire navigation with custom nav items” box directly underneath the textarea.
  4. Click Save Settings.

Example Configuration

Home | /
About | /about
Projects | /projects
RSS | /feed
Contact | /contact
GitHub | https://github.com/yourname

What Happens When Replaced

  • Full Ordering Control: The menu will display strictly the items listed in your textarea in their exact top-to-bottom sequence.
  • Automatic Page List Suppressed: The automatic alphabetical list of published pages will not be rendered.
  • Home Link Customisation: The automatic “Home” link is omitted, allowing you to choose whether to include a home link (Home | /), label it differently (e.g. Blog | /), or omit it entirely if your site title already links home.
  • Active State Highlighting: Pure Blog will still automatically apply the active current class to the appropriate menu item when a visitor is viewing that page or the homepage.