Navigation#

Inkstone builds sidebar navigation from the Markdown file tree.

Navigation uses:

• folder structure
• README.md and index.md conventions
• frontmatter title
• frontmatter order
• first H1 fallback
• filename fallback

Page Titles#

Inkstone resolves titles in this order:

1. frontmatter title
2. first H1 heading
3. filename converted to title case

---
title: Installation
order: 1
---

# Install Inkstone

The sidebar label is Installation.

Page Order#

order sorts pages inside their current navigation group:

---
title: Laravel Usage
order: 3
---

If two pages have the same order, Inkstone falls back to alphabetical sorting.

Group Order#

Use an index.md or README.md file inside the folder to control the group itself.

For example:

docs/
  README.md
  getting-started/
    index.md
    installation.md
    standalone-usage.md

Set the root page first:

---
title: Introduction
order: 0
---

Then set the group order in docs/getting-started/index.md:

---
title: Getting Started
order: 1
---

This places Getting Started after Introduction.

Parent Groups#

Folder parents are labels, not links. When a group has an index.md document, Inkstone adds that page as the first Overview child.

Example output:

Introduction
Getting Started
  Overview
  Installation
  Standalone Usage

This keeps parent labels stable while still exposing the folder index page.

URL Rules#

docs/README.md              -> /
docs/getting-started.md     -> /getting-started
docs/configuration/index.md -> /configuration
docs/configuration/github.md -> /configuration/github

When pretty URLs are enabled, these are written as index.html files in matching directories.

Collapsible Sections#

Sidebar parent sections can be collapsed. The initial state is configured with navigation.expanded:

'navigation' => [
    'expanded' => [], // default: only the active section
],

The active section always remains expanded regardless of configuration. Collapse state is persisted in the browser across page loads.