Customize Your Home Page and Menu

The home page is what students see each time they enter your course. It can set the tone for your course and help guide the student through the information you have provided. The course navigation, or menu bar, is also a very important part of making your course easy to navigate.

Create Your Home Page

Choose from five options for a home page setting: syllabus, recent activity, a page, modules, assignment list, or recent activity: How do I use the course home page? Links to an external site.

This video explains the various home page options as well as how to manage the navigation bar.

Course Home Page Customization Links to an external site. overview from Instructure Canvas Video Guides Links to an external site..

See also:

Course Layout: Customization Links to an external site. (video)

Using a custom page as the home page

  1. Click Pages in the course navigation menu, then "View All Pages"
  2. Locate the page you want to set as the front page
  3. Click on the settings icon to the right of the page title
  4. Select "Use as Front Page" (NOTE: Only published pages can be set as the front page.)
  5. Click Home in the course menu
  6. Click the "Choose Home Page" button from the sidebar
  7. Select "Pages Front Page"
  8. Click Save

Customize your course navigation menu 

To simplify the navigation, we recommend that you only provide links for areas the students need. Hide unneeded links from students to avoid confusion and focus attention on the content you've created. Instructors always have access to access hidden links.

How do I reorder and hide course navigation links? Links to an external site.

Navigation recommendations

For most courses we recommend leaving the following links visible: Syllabus, Modules, Grades, and CTEC.

For most courses we recommend hiding the following links: Files, Pages, and Outcomes. These are all parts of the course that are useful for instructors and course builders, but aren't easy for students to navigate.