Guidelines for Adding "Breadcrumbs" to a Page
Just below the page title at the top of each page is a menu navigation tool that is intended to help users navigate to higher level topics. This is also referred to as a "breadcrumb" menu. These higher level menus are assigned to each page using an extension based on the Category functionality of MediaWiki. The category of a page is the topic or menu immediately above the location of the page of interest. For example, the category of the topic page on "Emergency Action Planning" is "Emergency Management". On each page of the website, the category must be assigned using the code [[Category: Name]] and replacing "Name" with the desired category name.
The breadcrumb menus are manually defined at this location MediaWiki: Breadcrumbs. If a category has already been defined for a given topic, all that is required is to add the category to the topic page. If a new category and hierarchy menu is desired, it can be defined by editing the MediaWiki: Breadcrumbs page. Categories cannot include symbols or special characters. In general, they should be defined based on upper level page titles. Also note that extra blank lines should not be inserted in the MediaWiki: Breadcrumbs page. This will create an "Undefined Index" error in the header of some pages. This error can be easily resolved by deleting extra blank spaces on the MediaWiki: Breadcrumbs page.
In some cases, a topic page may logically fall under multiple high level topics. The breadcrumb extension does not allow for multiple categories to be assigned. In these cases, the editor should choose which category to assign for the purpose of the breadcrumb menu. This limitation does not restrict the ability to link to a given topic page from any number of other topic pages regardless of their category.
Note that if a category is not assigned on a given page, the breadcrumb menu will not appear for that page.
Revision ID: 6341
Revision Date: 12/23/2022