The Breadcrumbs module is most useful on fairly complex sites with pages that are related, linked, or nested. If you’ve ever been tempted to add menu items several layers deep, Breadcrumbs paired with a Sitemap, is probably the choice for you.
The example page we’ll be using is the wvls.org which contains reference information on topics spread over several pages. This can be visualized in the WVLS Sitemap which shows the high level categories – parent pages (which happen to be the main menu items for the page) and each of the topics under the main categories and additional child page nested underneath.
How to create this sitemap will be a separate tutorial.
In order to achieve this, several steps had to be completed first.
- Create a hierarchy among pages by assigning parent/child pages and assigning page orders.
The — before the name of the page indicates the level of the page in the hierarchy. “About” is the parent page, followed by “Board of Trustees and Committees,” then “BOT Agenda & Materials,” and “BOT Agendas & Materials Archive.”
“Board of Trustees Executive Committee Agenda and Materials” is on an equal level to “BOT Agendas & Materials.”
Pages can be organized into this hierarchy either within the page editor or using the Quick Edit menu (pictured here).

- Once the pages are given a parent page, you can order multiple pages that have the same parent further by using the “Order” selection. There is one trick: ZERO (0) is actually the first item, followed sequentially by 1, 2, 3, etc.
The image below shows V-Cat Consortium pages with Agenda and Materials, then several pages (Archive, a list of committees) all with the “V-Cat Agenda and Materials” page as a parent.
On the quick edit menu you see the Order number highlighted showing the V-Cat Executive Committee as rank “3.”
Remember the ranking starts with 0, so “V-Cat Agendas and Materials Archive” (0) is actually the first on the list, followed by “V-Cat Bibliographic,” (1), “V-Cat Cooperative Circulation,” (2), and then “V-cat Executive” (3) committees, and so on below.

Now you are ready to move on to using the Breadcrumbs module and/or creating a sitemap.