Navigation overview
Understand the layers that make up your site's navigation
Navigation nests from narrowest to broadest: pages, sections, tabs, versions, and products. Every layer is optional, and any combination of them is valid.
Navigation layers
The sidebar itself: grouped, nestable entries pointing at Markdown files
A top-level row that splits one product or version into parallel bodies of content
A dropdown for multiple releases of the same content, each with its own structure
A switcher for distinct offerings, each with its own navigation, tabs, and versions
Outer layers wrap inner ones: a product contains versions, a version contains tabs, and a tab contains sections. Each layer a page sits under adds a segment to its URL. You can rename or drop any segment, and a page’s own frontmatter can override its title, slug, and layout.
Other sidebar entries
A sidebar can also hold three entries that aren’t layers:
- An API Reference generated from your API definition.
- A changelog that renders a dated timeline of entries.
- A link pointing at an external URL.
Where navigation lives
The navigation key holds your sidebar structure, and which file holds that key depends on the layers you use. An unversioned single-product site keeps it in docs.yml. Adding products or versions moves it into a separate .yml file for each one.
Beyond the sidebar
Navbar links, the logo, the footer, and site-wide layout are site-level settings rather than navigation entries. How readers search across your navigation is controlled by search configuration.