The basic principle is: always hang a page in the website's menu, unless there are reasons from a visitor's perspective not to do so. After all, a website's menu is often a foothold for visitors to find their way independently when the 'path' we have mapped out for them does not match their needs.
Even if you choose not to hang a page in the menu, you should still ensure a good 'sense of place' as much as possible. This can be done by manually having a url assigned to the page. In order to compile that url, it is of course necessary to first determine where in the information architecture the page in question lives. So even of pages that are not hung in the menu, you should always consider where in the website's tree structure it belongs!
Once a url is assigned, the breadcrumb trail automatically follows this url structure, so that it also gives a sense of place.
Placing pages in the Drupal structure is an action that is performed (on demand) at the central level.
The navigation you offer to visitors aims to let them easily find all the content that is relevant at that moment. So this can vary from situation to situation: for example, sometimes it is useful to show all level 3 content in the tree structure in the menu, sometimes only all lower-level content.
On the https://www.ru.nl/over-ons/nieuws-en-agenda page, it is not necessary to also show all items under 'about us', because someone who comes for news is most likely not coming for organisational information or the history of Radboud University:
However, someone on the page https://www.ru.nl/over-ons/missie-en-strategie is likely to want to read not only the pages about the mission and strategy, but also something about the organisation, facts and figures, etc. to get a complete picture of Radboud University. At that point, therefore, all items under 'About us' are relevant to show.
So you could choose, to show navigation through the left menu only from a certain 'starting point'. In the examples above, 'about us' is a starting point, so at that point all submenu items that fall under 'about us' are shown. But 'news and calendar' is also a starting point, so once someone has clicked through to it, the left menu will only show the items under 'news and calendar', and no longer the parent items:
A special section in the website has been set up for the target group teachers, where all information for them is grouped together. The 'teachers' section falls under the 'staff' section in the information architecture (www.ru.nl/medewerkers/docenten), but because it is such a clear, rounded cluster of information, it may be chosen to start the left navigation from the 'teachers' point:
A visitor may only need to reach another page from one specific page. This latter page is not useful on its own, i.e. without the context of the previous page. This occurs, for example, with a registration form that you cannot fill in without having read other info on the site first. It is then sufficient to simply link to the corresponding form on the page with additional info.
You can only fill in the application form for an open day if you have read the information on the 'open day' page, and the only logical route to get to the application form is via the 'open day' page: e.g. on the 'bachelors' and 'information days' page, there are no direct links to the application form, only to the page about the open day. These two pages form one coherent whole. It is then not necessary to hang the application form in the link menu; it is sufficient to link to the form in the content on the 'open day' page.
If a page does not have such a clear conditional relationship with another page, it is advisable to hang the page in the menu. Otherwise, the visitor looking at the menu will not know the page exists and will quickly overlook it. This is especially true when the visitor is not on the page on which the content links to the page in question.
Some pages are 'alongside' the website in the information architecture. They are not a permanent part of the website, but are meant to accommodate a specific selection of visitors, whom you let visit the page through a link communicated only to them. This is sometimes the case with campaign pages.
Note that a campaign page can either be part of the website or not. This depends on how you deploy the page. A campaign page generally means: 'a landing page that provides information about an ongoing campaign'. So this is a page you refer to from ads, banners, internal links, etc. You can deploy this page in two ways:
-
As a stand-alone page
The page is not part of the normal site but forms an island on its own, with or without subpages. You do this if you don't want your regular website visitors to land on the campaign page, but e.g. only visitors who click on a specific advertisement, or on a link in an e-mail. This way, you can e.g. tailor the message on your campaign page very specifically to the text and visuals you used in your ad/banner, or you can make a select visitor a special offer that does not apply to everyone. You can also optimise your campaigns this way: you create different variants of ads and ad 1 leads to campaign page A, ad 2 to campaign page B, etc. Each visitor is presented with content on the campaign page that is a good match for the ad they saw, which works better that one general page for everyone, because then your message may not always come back perfectly. -
As part of your website
The page is then accessible to all visitors through the website's navigation. You link to it not only from an ad, mail, etc. but also via a link on your website (could be in a menu, a link in the content, an internal banner, etc). In this case, the page contains content intended for everyone and that content is complete (no information is left out to provide a specific focus).
In the old CMS iProx, there was a page type 'campaign page' that had no menu. That was specifically meant to be used for situation 1.
Therefore, if it is a campaign page that is not part of the site, you should not hang it in the menu. The breadcrumb trail is then also no longer relevant. But even then, it is still nice if you build the url neatly, if only because then you can find your campaign data in Google Analytics in a logical and convenient place.