Choosing whether to show or hide navigation links to your page

Advisory

Show automatically generated links in the navigation

In the 'General' tab of your webpage, under 'General section details' and next to 'Section options', you'll find a box labelled 'Show in navigation'. If that box is ticked, navigation links using the section name will be generated automatically by T4.

A screenshot of the T4 show in navigation box.

Sections with automatically generated links in the navigation have a shaded folder icon in T4. They are generally referred to as 'visible' sections.

Hidden webpages

If the 'Show in navigation' box is not ticked, then the page will still be published (if its status is approved, and it has content), but no links will be automatically generated in the navigation menus.

Sections that do not have automatically generated links have an unshaded folder icon in T4.

They are generally referred to as 'hidden' sections, but remember that they will not be truly hidden if other links to them have been created anywhere. These links may exist as a result of:

someone creating a link section in T4 that points to the hidden page
someone editing the page code in T4 to create a link to that page
someone creating a link to that page on a site hosted outside T4, which may of course be a non-University site.

Hidden pages and breadcrumbs

You will still need to consider the section name of a hidden page if it has any subpages, because the breadcrumbs of a subpage will automatically include a link to its 'hidden' parent page.

Hidden pages and search engines

A truly hidden webpage is one where:

no links have been created to that page, in T4 or anywhere else
and
if it has subpages, no links have been created to those pages either.

These pages are not listed by search engines. Although a subpage may link to its parent in its breadcrumbs, as that subpage has no link to it, it's not findable by a search engine, and therefore neither is its parent page.