You crossed the first hurdle—you got the club’s new website up and running in short order. The Easy and Beautiful version 6 templates were simple to apply. The pressure from the Board is off; they’re pleased with the outcome. A month or two has passed. Now you have a new opportunity to give more thought to the website and the layout of this valuable real estate. One of the places to start as you give the website a second once over is in the usage of your top and side menu bars.
Our templates default with matching, identical top and side menu bars. It is not necessary to keep this redundancy, especially if you have some major community projects for which the public turns to your site for upcoming details. You have three options open to you:
- Turn off the top bar and keep the side bar
- Turn off the side bar and keep the top bar
- Keep both top and side bars but vary the topics and links between them
So perhaps you have a tech savvy group that you believe views your site from their tablets and smartphones in addition to their desktop computers. In that case, you may want to turn off the top menu bar and rely solely on the side menu. Log into the website configuration. Go to Site Admin and opt to turn off the top menu bar.
Another layout might be to keep the top menu bar and turn off the side menu bar. In this instance, go to Widget Positions in the website configuration and drag the side bar into the middle group of unused widgets. If you ever change your mind, you can drag it back to either side position.
And last, if you decide to keep both the top and side menu bars, be aware you can edit the labels and hyperlinks to serve different purposes. For example, you could keep the top menu to the more standard items like Club, District and Rotary Links while directing the side menu items to those special activities your club conducts. This makes it faster for your nonmembers to locate project details and become more aware of your service to the community without having to hunt through menu bar drop-downs. It can pay off to think of your website layout as precious real estate, positioning your current and most important projects in prime locations.