WordPress Menus

Normally you will have a navigation menu at the top of your page. If you would like to edit this, or create a menu, in the main WordPress admin menu select ‘Menus’ under ‘Appearance’:

In our example we have yet to create our first menu – hence the message ‘Create your first menu below’ – but the process is identical for editing existing menus. In the left section ‘Add menu items’ check the checkbox then click ‘Add to Menu’. The page will then be added to the bottom of the ‘Menu Structure’ section:

If you want to re-arrange the order of the menu items simply drag and drop them:

You can drag and menu to the side, this will turn it into a ‘sub item’ and, depending on your theme, will normally turn it into a drop-down menu item under the item above it.

The name shown in the menu is by default the title of the actual page. You can change this by clicking the arrow on the right then changing the text in the ‘Navigation Label’ box. You can also remove the menu item using the ‘Remove’ option here:

External Links

If you want to add a link to an external site, under ‘Add menu items’ select the ‘Custom Links’ option. Enter the URL that it should link to and the text that should appear in the menu, then click the ‘Add to Menu’ button:

Once you have all your pages added click ‘Save Menu’ to save it:

Menu Locations

Now the menu has been created you can define where it is displayed. Click on the ‘Manage Locations’ tab:

The actual locations are defined by your theme and in most cases there were just be one location available – Primary. Select our newly created menu in the dropdown then click ‘Save Changes’:

Nerd tip: As well as these defined locations, menus can also be added to ‘widgets’. Widget areas may be defined in places such as sidebars and the footer. You can create smaller, more specialist menus for these areas. If you need assistance creating a widget or menu area Nerd Crossing can help.