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Setting Up Header Navigation in HubSpot with Generator

Access HubSpot Navigation Settings

Click the gear icon in the top right of HubSpot to open your account settings. From the left sidebar, navigate to Content > Navigation Menus. This is where all navigation menus are created and managed.

Create a New Menu

Click Add Menu, give your menu a name, then click Create Menu. You'll start with a blank menu. Click Add Menu Item to add your first item.

Each menu item has a Label (the text that appears in the nav) and a link type. The default Page Link option is recommended — it lets you select from pages you've already created in HubSpot and maintains the association even if a page's URL changes later.

Add and Organize Menu Items

Hover over any menu item to reveal the Actions dropdown. From here you can:

  • Add an item below — adds a new top-level menu item
  • Clone — duplicates the current item (useful for building out menus quickly)
  • Add a child item below — creates a nested dropdown under the current item
  • Item without a link — use this as the parent for a dropdown (e.g., a "Services" item that reveals sub-pages on hover)
  • URL link — use this to link to external URLs outside your site

To build a dropdown menu, set the parent item to Item without a link, then use Add child item below to nest pages beneath it. Cloning a child item will clone it as a child, preserving the structure.

A Key HubSpot Nuance: Pages Must Be Published

Pages must be published to appear in the navigation menu selector. Draft pages won't show up. If you're not ready to go live, publish to your HubSpot staging domain — this makes the page available to the menu without pushing it to your live URL (see the previous lesson on domains for how to access the staging domain option).

Bring the Menu Into Your Header

Once your menu is saved, go to your page and click on the header. HubSpot will prompt you to enter the Global Content Editor — click yes. Inside the editor, click on the Menu element and select the menu you just created from the dropdown. The nav will populate immediately. Use Preview to confirm the layout, including any dropdowns.

This lesson covered how to create and configure navigation menus in HubSpot's account settings, including building nested dropdowns and linking to internal pages. The key action was creating a menu and assigning it to the header via the Global Content Editor. The next lesson will cover building a scroll-based page header where menu items smooth-scroll to sections on the page.