Setting Up Élan Navigation and Dropdown Menus

Build Élan’s main menu in Blogger Layout, including multi-level dropdowns using the theme’s built-in hyphen hierarchy.

Élan uses Blogger’s Pages gadget for the main navigation. The theme then converts hyphen-prefixed page names into dropdown levels automatically.

Open the navigation widget

Go to Blogger → Layout.
Find the Navigation section.
Edit Main Navigation.

Create normal top-level links

Add a page or custom link normally when it should appear at the top level.

About
Blog
Contact

Create a dropdown

Prefix a child item with one hyphen. Élan removes the hyphen from the public menu and places the item below the preceding top-level item.

Lifestyle
- Fashion
- Travel

Create deeper levels

Each additional leading hyphen adds another level:

Lifestyle
- Travel
-- Destinations
--- Europe
--- Asia

The hierarchy depends on order. A child must come after the parent it belongs to.

Important formatting rules

Use hyphens at the beginning of the Page/Link name.
A single hyphen means child, two means grandchild, three means the next nested level.
Do not skip a level. If there is no valid parent for a prefixed item, Élan treats it as a top-level item.
The prefixes are intentionally hidden while the menu initializes, so visitors do not see labels such as “- Travel” flash on screen.

Mobile behavior

On smaller screens the menu switches to the mobile navigation. Parent items receive their own expand/collapse controls so nested links remain accessible without requiring hover.

What you should see

Top-level links appear across the navigation bar on desktop. Parent items receive a dropdown arrow, and their prefixed children appear inside the dropdown without the hyphens.