Add breadcrumbs helps with accessibility, navigation and SEO. I like them and I use them on my blog sites. Fortunately, there is a straight forward way to add breadcrumbs to your website. Below are the steps I took to add breadcrumbs.
There are a few steps to take to install breadcrumbs on the website.
Even though this plugin has not recently been updated, it still works fine. The plugin is called nextjs-breadcrumbs. Written specifically for Next.js, the author, Niklas Mencke, states this plugin will only work with Next.js websites.
npm install nextjs-breadcrumbs
My initial component looks like this.
import styles from './breadcrumbs.module.css';
import { default as NextBreadcrumbs } from 'nextjs-breadcrumbs';
const Breadcrumbs = () => {
return (
<div className={styles.breadcrumbs_container}>
return <NextBreadcrumbs rootLabel='Home' />;
</div>
);
};
export default Breadcrumbs;
There are several options for how to display, style and construct the Breadcrumbs on your site. You can read about all of them on the [https://github.com/NiklasMencke/nextjs-breadcrumbs#pass-custom-list-of-characters-that-should-be-replaced-in-each-label](nextjs-breadcrumbs Github).
You should import the new component into your pages with a standard import statement. Even though the GitHub does an excellent job explaining some the options, I made some notes below:
import Breadcrumbs from '../../../components/core/breadcrumbs';
If you want to use default styles, then you need to add the important statement for the styles into your _app.js
file
import 'nextjs-breadcrumbs/dist/index.css';
Then change the component like this:
import styles from './breadcrumbs.module.css';
import { default as NextBreadcrumbs } from 'nextjs-breadcrumbs';
const Breadcrumbs = () => {
return (
<div className={styles.breadcrumbs_container}>
- return <NextBreadcrumbs rootLabel='Home' />;
+ return <NextBreadcrumbs useDefaultStyle={true} rootLabel='Home' />;
</div>
);
};
export default Breadcrumbs;
I dug into the node modules and copied nextjs-breadcrumbs/dist/index.css
over into my CSS Modules file called breadcrumbs.module.css
. I removed a prefix and the default styles are like this:
.breadcrumbs_container ol {
list-style: none;
overflow: hidden;
font: 16px Sans-Serif;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li {
float: left;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a {
color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
text-decoration: none;
padding: 10px 0 10px 50px;
background: rgb(230, 224, 224);
position: relative;
display: block;
float: left;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a::after {
content: ' ';
display: block;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border-top: 50px solid transparent; /* Go big on the size, and let overflow hide */
border-bottom: 50px solid transparent;
border-left: 30px solid rgb(230, 224, 224);
position: absolute;
top: 50%;
margin-top: -50px;
left: 100%;
z-index: 2;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a::before {
content: ' ';
display: block;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border-top: 50px solid transparent;
border-bottom: 50px solid transparent;
border-left: 30px solid white;
position: absolute;
top: 50%;
margin-top: -50px;
margin-left: 1px;
left: 100%;
z-index: 1;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
padding-left: 20px;
pointer-events: visible !important;
cursor: pointer !important;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(2) a {
background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(2) a:after {
border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(3) a {
background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(3) a:after {
border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(4) a {
background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(4) a:after {
border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(5) a {
background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(5) a:after {
border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a {
background: rgb(238, 235, 232) !important;
color: black;
pointer-events: none;
cursor: default;
padding-right: 20px;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a::after {
border: 0;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a:hover {
background: rgb(194, 226, 221);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a:hover:after {
border-left-color: rgb(194, 226, 221) !important;
}
I liked the default styles but they didn't fit my design. So my simple CSS in the breadcrumbs.module.css
file looks like this:
.breadcrumbs_container {
margin-bottom: 3.5rem;
}
.breadcrumbs_container ol {
list-style: none;
overflow: hidden;
font-size: 90%;
margin: 0;
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
padding-left: 25px;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li {
list-style: none;
text-transform: capitalize;
height: 4rem;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a {
text-decoration: none;
margin-bottom: 0;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a::after {
content: ' > ';
padding: 0 0.5rem;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
content: ' ';
pointer-events: visible !important;
cursor: pointer !important;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
pointer-events: visible !important;
cursor: pointer !important;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a {
pointer-events: none;
cursor: default;
font-weight: 900;
font-size: 95%;
border-bottom: 1px solid;
border-bottom-width: 2px;
padding-right: 0;
margin-right: 0;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a::after {
border: 0;
content: none;
}
There are more options in the GitHub.