If you are restructuring your site, it's not a bad thing to try and see how your navigation would look like with fewer pages. Unfortunately one way that Site Managers try to do this is by disabling their menu items.
Don't disable menu items
It may seem harmless at first, but disabling menu items can make your site structure unstable. This often results in a menu or two going missing.
So if you're ever tempted to disable a menu item, don't even. Unless you're okay with visitors suddenly losing access to pages on your site.
But my menu is HUGE
A large, ungainly menu is usually a sign of content management gone awry, and that the time is nigh for a content audit.
Go to your Workbench. Look at all the Basic Pages as a start, then ask yourself:
- Are they up to date?
- Are they necessary?
If they're not up to date, edit. If they're not necessary, delete.
If that's too harsh, you can thank them for their service KonMari-style before letting them go gently into the bin.
Do this for all content types and you'll be surprised at how suddenly more manageable your content (and subsequently, your menu) becomes.
If the fear of losing content is overwhelming, you can use archiving tools to make static copies of your site. Otherwise, you can request a staging site.
Basic pages are not the ONLY type of content
Another thing you should consider is transferring content from Basic Pages to other types that do not yield menu items by default.
But my menu is still large and ungainly
If you're still bedevilled by large menus that make any kind of organization impossible, you can choose to unpublish pages associated with extraneous menu items.
Click on the MODERATE tab and unpublish the latest or published revision (the one in green) - the page will then disappear from your menu.
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