Navigation, Redirects & Categories (Content Model)
Three supporting structures wire a Chinaski site together — where the content lives within itself.
Navigation items
Menus are per language: nav items are ordered entries (label, URL, slot, parent) rendered by the theme’s header/footer templates. The active theme declares menu slots (a marker in the theme header/footer template enables slot-based navigation); without declared slots, order is simple ascending order. External links are supported (with target=“_blank” rel=“noopener” applied).
Redirects
Redirects map old URLs to new ones for pages and posts, per language, with a status code choice (301 permanent, 302 temporary, 307 temporary-strict) and optional pattern matching (* wildcards and $1 substitutions — these require support in the reverse proxy, since the generated redirect file format covers plain path rewrites only). The builder writes the plain rules into the site’s redirect file; patterns are skipped there and need proxy configuration. Redirects that would point at a still-live URL are skipped so a live address can’t be taken over. A built-in 404 monitor records missing paths (with hits and referrers) for redirect candidates.
Categories
Post categories are per language (unique name+slug per language). They build real archive pages — paginated, per language, with proper canonical handling — and the admin provides rename-with-cascade, merge, and reassign-and-delete operations so taxonomy cleanup never strands posts. See the categories & tags page for the full behavior.
Design tokens
Design tokens are named brand values (grouped) that themes consume — changing a token updates themes across the site without editing templates. They’re covered by theming docs; the same mechanism powers the admin’s preview so what you see under Preview matches built output.