If you get onto /config/user-interface/navigation-block
you see Shortcuts
in the Navigation
category and Content
and Administration
in the Menus
category.
If you are trying to map those navigation blocks to the sections available in the sidebar you see the Shortcuts
section, then the Content
section and finally the Administration
section. It you disable the Administration
section under the assumption the block at the bottom with the menu items Help
and the username might belong to the Administration
navigation block, it turns out it does not. The block at the bottom is fixed and an implicit given navigation block, which is not clearly communicated out of the box, or better at all.
If you press now the Place navigation
button, the dialog modal (/admin/config/user-interface/navigation-block/library?region=content
) is presenting you a list of six menu blocks from the standard installation profile and two navigation blocks provided by the navigation module itself.
For each of the eight blocks you have a Place navigation block
button, but you have no way to directly see within this modal view which of these blocks is already in use and building the current navigation in the sidebar - you have to actually remember, in case of a small working memory that can be challenging endeavor.
Beyond that, even though you don't have a User
navigation block listed on /admin/config/user-interface/navigation-block
, in the modals list you actually have two navigation blocks in relation to the user, User account menu
in the Menus
category and User
in the Navigation menu
category which is a bit of a head scratcher. If you don't want to assume something you have to actually manually test and as it turns out if you add the User
navigation block you have a duplicate of the menu already placed at the bottom of the sidebar which is not listed on /admin/config/user-interface/navigation-block
. In general it has to be noted that you are able to add any of those menus x number of times.
/admin/config/user-interface/navigation-block/library?region=content
Place navigation block
button for the Footer
blockSave navigation block
buttonRepeat those three steps another one or two times
/config/user-interface/navigation-block
:
One approach might be to simply add the User
navigation block to the list so you get by default the following order:
The only detail I am not sure if it is possible to disable the ability to change the order of a single component in those vertically sortable lists?
/admin/config/user-interface/navigation-block/library?region=content
Option A: only one instance per available block allowed
I would only show the Place navigation block
button for those blocks that have not been added yet, either just remove the button or replace it with a label with something like Already added
. as an alternative you could also just hide already added navigation blocks entirely and only show navigation blocks not added yet.
Option B: more than one instance per available block allowed
If there is the need/requirement to add one of the blocks a second time (or even more times) it might be a good thing to either add some sort of confirmation step or add a fourth column with how many times a navigation block is already added?
Each of the options would provide some sort of guard rails to the user enabling them to make an informed decision.
Probably out of scope for this issue and might need a follow up, but i wanted to note about an inconsistency in the context of blocks. On the Block Layout page the verb "place" is used (Place block
) same as the navigation module, while in Layout Builder the verb "add" is used (Add block
). Ideally the verb should be consistent.