Vortex allows you to choose from 3 menu options:

1. ButtonMenu - The ButtonMenu is a new menu style based on the advanced SplitMenu used in Sporticus. The twist however is that that the first level of menu options is rendered as a configurable list of button images. We supply 20 buttons in both "on" and "off" states plus blanks for each color variation.
2. SplitMenu - Then venerable SplitMenu is a solid choice for navigation if you don't want to use the ButtonMenu. It works by rendering the top-level menu options horizontally, and the submenu/child items are rendered in a module on the side.
3. Suckerfish - Back by popular demand is the drop-down style suckerfish menu

The ButtonMenu was created expressly for the Vortex template to address a need for a very visual menu that lent itself well to a portal style design. This is the primary navigation choice for Vortex and with the included blanks you are able to create any buttons you wish for you particular application. For a full list of all the available buttons for the ButtonMenu check out the ButtonMenu Configuration Tutorial

Configuration

So the question is how to setup this hierarchical menu in Joomla! to take advantage of the ButtonMenu, SplitMenu, or Suckerfish menus and all the benefits and trappings that come with it? Well the good news is that it can all be done in Joomla! administrator without the need of any special software or component because although the default menu module might be lacking, the menu administration in quite sound.

The first step is to login to the Joomla! Administrator console and navigate to the Menu drop-down, and then select the menu you wish to configure. This is usually main menu. As you can see in the image of the menu manager you can easily construct a hierarchical 'tree' like menu structure that will translate nicely into the SplitMenu. To achieve this you can click on a menu item, and then in it's Details section, you can select a Parent Item. In the case of this demonstration you can see that the Joomla! License menu item has a parent of J! Extensions. This is represented in the main menu manager with the Joomla! License item being a 'child' or 'sub-item' of J! Extensions. On the site you'll see that when you click on J! Extensions a vertical (by default) sub menu appears, of which Joomla! License is one of the entries.