# Custom navbar
## HTML
If you need custom navigation, you can create a HTML-based navigation bar.
> [!IMPORTANT] Note that documentation links begin with `#/`.
```html
```
## Markdown
Alternatively, you can create a custom markdown-based navigation file by setting `loadNavbar` to **true** and creating `_navbar.md`, compare [loadNavbar configuration](configuration#loadnavbar).
```html
```
```markdown
- [En](/)
- [chinese](/zh-cn/)
```
To create drop-down menus:
```markdown
- Translations
- [En](/)
- [chinese](/zh-cn/)
```
> [!IMPORTANT] You need to create a `.nojekyll` in `./docs` to prevent GitHub Pages from ignoring files that begin with an underscore.
`_navbar.md` is loaded from each level directory. If the current directory doesn't have `_navbar.md`, it will fall back to the parent directory. If, for example, the current path is `/guide/quick-start`, the `_navbar.md` will be loaded from `/guide/_navbar.md`.
## Nesting
You can create sub-lists by indenting items that are under a certain parent.
```markdown
- Getting started
- [Quick start](quickstart.md)
- [Writing more pages](more-pages.md)
- [Custom navbar](custom-navbar.md)
- [Cover page](cover.md)
- Configuration
- [Configuration](configuration.md)
- [Themes](themes.md)
- [Using plugins](plugins.md)
- [Markdown configuration](markdown.md)
- [Language highlight](language-highlight.md)
```
renders as
## Combining custom navbars with the emoji plugin
If you use the [emoji plugin](plugins#emoji):
```html
```
you could, for example, use flag emojis in your custom navbar Markdown file:
```markdown
- [:us:, :uk:](/)
- [:cn:](/zh-cn/)
```