GCM Docs

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Navigation menu ​

The navigation menu is the row of links across the top of every page on your public site. You build it under Website Builder → Settings → Navigation. The same items appear in the header bar on desktop and inside the hamburger drawer on mobile — you don't maintain two menus.

Navigation editor

How items work ​

Each row is one link. You give it a label (what visitors see), pick a link type (where it goes), and optionally tick "open in new tab." Drag the grip handle on the left to reorder — the order in the editor is the order in the menu.

There's no save-and-publish gap here: changes go live the moment you click Save navigation at the bottom. If your site is published, visitors see the new menu on their next page load.

TIP

Don't try to cram everything in. Five to seven top-level items is the sweet spot for most church sites. Push secondary destinations (Give, Contact, social links) into the footer or a CTA button rather than the main menu.

The dropdown next to each label has three options.

Page link ​

Pick from a dropdown of your published site pages. This is the right choice for anything you built in the Pages tab — About, Ministries, Contact, What We Believe, etc.

A few things to know:

  • The dropdown only shows published pages. Drafts don't appear — link them after you publish.
  • If you delete the page later, the menu item stays but the link 404s. Either remove the menu item or repoint it.
  • The page's title and the menu label are separate — you can call a page "What We Believe" on the page itself but use "Beliefs" as the menu label to save space.

Special page ​

A small fixed list of routes that exist on every site automatically because they're data-driven, not user-created:

These aren't pages you can edit in the Pages tab — they're surfaces of the data you publish in the Content tab and the rest of GCM. The special-page link type just adds them to your menu.

Custom URL ​

A free-text field for anything else. Three common uses:

  • External URLs — https://youtube.com/@yourchurch, https://podcasts.apple.com/.... The editor shows an "external" badge when it detects http:// or https://. External links default to opening in the same tab unless you tick "open in new tab" — for external destinations, you almost always want the new-tab option on.
  • Internal anchors — #service-times to jump to a section ID on the current page. Useful for one-page-style sites.
  • Internal routes — /contact if you'd rather hardcode the path than pick from the dropdown (rare, but sometimes handy when migrating).

The editor validates that something is filled in — if the field is empty, you'll see a red Invalid link warning and won't be able to save until you fix it.

Reordering ​

Grab the grip handle on the left of any row and drag up or down. The list re-sorts instantly. The order is persisted to sort_order on each item, so it sticks across reloads. There's no separate "sort order" field to manage manually.

The order in this editor is the order visitors see in the menu, top-to-bottom on mobile and left-to-right on desktop.

Open in new tab ​

Tick the "open in new tab" checkbox for any link where you don't want visitors leaving your site. The checkbox only appears for Special and Custom link types — Page links always open in the same tab because they stay on your site.

Removing an item ​

Click the X on the right side of the row. The item disappears from the editor immediately, and is removed from the database when you click Save navigation.

WARNING

If you remove a menu item before saving, the change isn't persisted. Same for re-adding — additions are unsaved until you click Save navigation.

The current editor is a flat list — each item is one top-level link, no nested sub-items. Dropdown menus are on the roadmap. For now, the working pattern is:

  • Use a single landing page (/ministries) and link to that.
  • On the landing page, put a Grid or Columns block with cards linking to the child pages (/ministries/youth, /ministries/worship).
  • Keep the top nav clean.

That mirrors how most church sites are structured anyway — visitors don't hover dropdowns reliably, especially on phones.

Mobile menu ​

On screens under ~768px, the header collapses into a hamburger icon. Tapping it slides in a full-height drawer with the same items in the same order. There's nothing to configure separately — mobile behaviour is automatic.

A few things worth knowing about the mobile drawer:

  • Tapping a link closes the drawer and navigates.
  • Tapping outside the drawer (or the close X) dismisses it without navigating.
  • The drawer respects your theme colours — background, text, link colour all carry over.

If your menu has more than 8 items, the drawer scrolls. There's no nested grouping in the drawer either — it's the same flat list as desktop.

The footer has its own link list, configured under Settings → Header & Footer, not here. The footer is the right place for secondary links — privacy policy, terms, donor portal, "back to top". The main navigation should stay focused on the destinations that drive engagement.

See also: Creating a page, Publishing + drafts, Blocks catalog.