This week I’m going to take a look at using Breadcrumbs and the flexible functionality that Catalyst Theme provides for this feature.
For the uninitiated, a Breadcrumbs Trail is a means of showing a visitor where they currently are in the hierarchy of the site’s structure of levels and sub-levels.
In a Breadcrumbs Trail, each level of the hierarchy is shown as a hyperlink, so that a visitor can jump back up one or more levels.
Here is an example where three layers of Category and sub-Category have been set up in such a hierarchy – that is a Post may be assigned to a Category that has a Parent Category (containing it and other Categories) and that Category itself also belongs to a higher level Parent Category of its own.
The Catalyst BreadCrumbs Trail
This shows the visitor that the point they are at on the site is the post called “Catalyst Document Title” which has a Category of “In Page SEO” which has a Parent Category of “SEO Features” and which itself has a Parent Category of “Features”.
If the reader wants to, they can now simply click on the link for the Category “SEO Features” in the Breadcrumbs Trail for example.
That will take them straight to that Category’s Archive Page of Posts and thus provides a simple and fast method of navigation that may not be so readily available elsewhere on the page.
Higher Level in Category Level Hierarchy
As well as Posts and Categories, the Breadcrumbs Trail also applies to Pages and Sub-Pages in a similar manner.
SEO Benefit
As well as providing a useful indicator to the visitor of their location within the site, and an additional means of navigation through it, one of the other main benefits that implementing a Breadcrumbs Trail can provide is regards Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
As the Breadcrumbs Trail appears near the top of the page content, it is one of the earlier items on the page that the search engines will encounter and so provides an excellent opportunity to legitimately include plenty of keyword rich phrases that are all related and relevant to the topic for the search engines to digest!
Catalyst Theme Breadcrumb Options
Catalyst Theme provides a great deal of flexibility for implementing a Breadcrumbs Trail.
The main options for it can be found in the Breadcrumbs Options section of the Catalyst Core Options > Content settings.
These allow you to exclude the Breadcrumbs Trail from say, the Home Page while including them on every other type of page… or just including them on Archive Pages etc…
There are also options to amend the text for the different elements and instances of the trail along with specifying the separator character between each part of the trail.
Catalyst Theme Core Breadcrumb Options
Finally, there is a comprehensive set of options to style and design the Breadcrumbs area including fonts, colours and borders etc in the Dynamik Options > Breadcrumbs section.
Dynamik Options for Styling the Breadcrumbs Trail
Once again, Catalyst Theme allows you to implement great functionality with maximum flexibility and design choice.
Have fun.
David.
David Pritchard is the author of the Catalyst Theme Cheat Sheet – the 250+ page guide that helps users make the most of Catalyst Theme. Licenced Catalyst Theme users can get their FREE copy in the downloads section of the Catalyst Theme forum. David also has a site that with guides to using Catalyst Theme, WordPress, SEO, internet marketing techniques and other topics at http://www.FastStepInternetMarketing.com
Excellent Theme, Congratulations