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Add media, menus, forms and redirects

In this guide you do four everyday jobs that affect the whole site: upload an image, build a menu, add a contact form and forward an old address to a new page. Owners and editors can do all of them.

Before you start

Steps

Upload an image

  1. Open Settings > Media (/admin/settings/media) and press Upload. Choose up to 20 files at once. Each file may be up to 10 MB unless the server's administrator changed that limit.
  2. Open the image you uploaded. Fill in its Alt text, a short description for people who cannot see the picture, and a Caption if you want one, then save. The library shows a Missing badge on every image that still has no alt text. You rarely need the library to insert a picture later: image fields and both editors open it as a picker, with search and an upload button.

Build a menu

  1. Open Theme > Menus (/admin/theme/menus) and press New menu. Give it a name, such as "Main", and a Location: Header, Footer, Sidebar or No location. Your theme decides which locations it shows.
  2. Add an item. Give it a Label, the text visitors see, and choose what it links to. Tick Open in a new tab only if visitors should keep your site open.
    • Page or post: type a few letters and pick one of your pages.
    • Custom address: any web address or path, such as https://example.com/shop or /contact.
    • Category or tag: the page that lists everything in that group.
  3. Arrange the items with Move up, Move down, Indent (put an item under the one above it) and Outdent. With JavaScript on, you can also drag them; sub-items move with their parent.
  4. Press Save menu. The whole menu is saved at once, or not at all if something is wrong.

Add a contact form

  1. Open Settings > Forms (/admin/settings/forms) and press New form. Give it a name, such as "Contact", and press Create form.
  2. Press Add field for each question. For a contact form, add a name (single-line text), an email address and a message (multi-line text), and tick Required where an answer is needed.
  3. Under After someone sends it, fill in the Success message and the address in Email notifications to. Notification email works only once email is set up (Settings > Email or the server's SMTP_* settings); see Set up email. Set Status to Active and press Save form.
  4. Put the form on a page. In the page builder, add the form element and choose your form, or add a contact-form section if your theme has one.
  5. Read what visitors send under Settings > Forms > Submissions (/admin/settings/submissions). Messages that the spam rules catch are kept with the status Spam; move one back if it was a mistake.

Forward an old address

  1. Open Settings > Redirects (/admin/settings/redirects) and press New redirect. A 301 redirect is a permanent forward from an old address to a new one: visitors and search engines that ask for the old address go to the new one.
  2. Fill in From, the old path such as /old-services, and To, the new path such as /services. Keep Type at 301: moved permanently, then press Save redirect.
  3. Find addresses that need a redirect. The 404 log tab lists addresses visitors asked for that do not exist. Each row has Create redirect, Ignore and Remove. The Explain a URL tab shows, step by step, what happens to any address you type.

When you change the address of a published page, Hatamoto adds the redirect from its old address for you, so links keep working.

Check it worked

  • Open your site: the menu shows in the location you chose, with your items.
  • Open https://example.com/old-services: the browser lands on /services.
  • Send a test message through your form: it appears under Submissions.

If the menu does not show, your theme may not print that location: choose another Location, such as Header, and save again. If a redirect does nothing, check that From starts with / and matches the old address exactly, capital letters included, and use Explain a URL to see which rule wins.

Every setting of these screens is in the Settings reference. Wildcard redirects and the order in which redirect rules are checked are in Redirect rules.

Next steps