Note: You are currently viewing documentation for Moodle 2.2. Up-to-date documentation for the latest stable version is available here: Navigation block.

Navigation block

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The navigation block appears on every page of the site. It contains an expanding tree menu which includes My Home, Site Pages, My Profile, and Courses. What appears in the navigation block depends on the role of the user, where they are in the Moodle site, and any settings that have been applied globally.

Overview

The navigation block has links which can be expanded or collapsed.When logged in, a regular user will see the following as default:

navblock1.png

My home

This takes the user directly to their personal dashboard, sometimes known as My Moodle

Site pages

This expands to show pages and resources available site wide, for example, user blogs and a calendar. Any items which have been added to the front page, such as resources/activities from the Main Menu block, or the Site News will also appear here. Other items depend on the role of the user, so an administrator will see reports and notes, for instance.

sitepages.png

My profile

This expands to allow regular users to view (and, if allowed, edit) their profile, view their forum posts, view and add and blog entries and messages and access their private files, providing these features have been enabled by the administrator. The administrator will also have a link here to Notes and Activity reports.

viewprofilenavblock.png

My courses

This expands to show courses the user is enrolled in. Note that an administrator sees this link as "Courses", which expands to the course categories. Once inside a course, the block expands to show each section of the course (which may be renamed as in the following screenshot) and activities/resources which are in that section. If the administrator has enabled course section links via Appearance>Navigation, then clicking on a topic section will show only that one section in the central area of the course.

coursenavblock2.png

Navigation Block settings

Site Administrators can configure the site level Navigation Block. Teacher and Student roles have limited options to configure the position of the Navigation Block on their MyMoodle page.

With the editing on, select the edit icon in the Navigation Block. Then configure the following settings:

Allow users to dock this block

This allows users to free up screen area if they need to, displaying a link to the Navigation Block in a tab at the side.

Display categories as links

As long as Display Categories is enabled in Site Administration > Appearance > Navigation (which it is by default), this setting can be enabled.

Where Categories display as links, clicking on those links opens the category page, whereas clicking on the small arrowhead pulls down a further menu of its courses. It may be helpful to induct users to this distinction.

Trimming

Long titles wrap over several lines, and this can affect the readability of a menu.

Enabling trimming removes characters which exceed an optional limit for each menu item. There is an option to remove characters from the beginning, middle, or end of the title.

Generate Navigation for the following

The options in this setting allow you to configure how far the menu should expand.

Everything
the menu expands to allow access to any page in any of your course areas.
Categories and courses
the menu expands as far as listing links to the course areas in each category.
Categories, courses and course structures
the menu expands as far as listing the section titles in each course area (these display unlinked).
Categories, courses and course activities
the menu expands to allow access to any page in any of your course areas.

See also

  • Menu items don't expand when clicked MDL-31678 (tracker issue and workaround)