If you have built a site in WordPress you will certainly want to create a navigation menu for your website. In order to allow your users to easily access every page of the site.
In this detailed article, we will therefore see “how to edit menu in WordPress?” and how to make a classic drop-down menu in WordPress complete with main items and sub-items.
This is a guide designed for beginners, but even if you are a more advanced user, I still recommend that you read the article because you may discover new features that you did not know about.
Create the menu in WordPress
- To create your menu in WordPress, first, go to your administration panel and from the left column click on “Appearance> Menu”.
- Now you just have to write the name of the menu in the box in the center (eg “Main menu”) and click on ” Create Menu “.
- Ok, now that you’ve given your menu a name, it’s ready to be filled with links from your website pages. Before doing this, however, I recommend that you click on the top right on ” Screen settings ” and go to check all the items at the top under ” Show advanced menu properties “.
In this way, you can make the most of all the features made available by WordPress. Then close the window by always clicking on ” Screen settings “.
Done? Well, continue reading because now let’s see how to customize your menu in WordPress.
At this point, you need to add the various links relating to the pages of your website to the menu.
To do this go to the administration panel screen regarding your menu and in the left column you will find various sections:
- Pages: that is the list of pages on your site.
- Articles
- Products (in case you have installed a plugin to create an e-commerce site).
- Custom links: i.e. links to sites or pages external to your site.
- Categories (in case you have a blog and want to categorize articles by topic).
From each of these sections, you can select the items you prefer, insert them in your menu and modify them if necessary. The procedure is really very simple and now I will explain how to do it.
To add pages to the menu, go to the ” Pages ” section, check all those that interest you and click on ” Add to menu “.
To select them more easily from the list, you can search by writing the name of the page you need in the appropriate box.
As you can see, in the menu structure each page is presented to you as a rectangular module. By clicking on the triangle you can possibly add details in order to customize each item.
In fact, you can:
- Change the text to be displayed on the link by writing in the appropriate box under ” Navigation label “
- Have the page open in another tab, by checking ” Open link in new window/tab”
- Assign a custom CSS class to that link (this is an optional feature, for more experienced users only)
- Add a description to the link, but it will only be visible if the theme you are using supports it.
To add custom links to the menu, the procedure is exactly the same as I just explained for pages. Go to the left column where there are the various sections to add to the menu and select ” Custom links “.
At this point, write the URL of the link you want to add in the boxes (eg http://www.google.com ) and the text of the link that will be displayed (in our case “Google”). Then click on ” Add to Menu “.
Now
As you have seen for the pages, also in this case you can assign additional details by clicking on the rectangular modules within the menu structure, such as opening the link in another tab.
If you want, you can also make each menu item correspond to different sub-items, which will cascade under the main item.
To do this, just click on the menu structure on the rectangular module corresponding to the page. You want and drag it with the mouse under the main page. But be careful to leave an indent on the left.
This way for WordPress this will be a secondary entry, reachable under the main entry.
Ok, now that your menu is practically ready to be displayed, all you have to do is decide where to place it on your website.
In the screen you previously used, go to the section below ” Menu settings “. As you can see, various items appear next to ” Display position ” (you probably won’t see them all, it depends on the theme you are using).
Assuming you want to view the menu you just created as the main menu of your website, just check ” Main Navigation ” and click ” Save menu “ at the top right.
At this point, try going to your website page and updating it. Your menu should appear at the top.
As you can see, by clicking on the various items you will be redirected to the respective linked pages.
Furthermore,
By moving the mouse cursor over the various menu items, the other sub-items you added previously will be displayed.
One last thing, if you are not satisfied with the menu you just created, you can easily go to edit or delete it from the WordPress admin panel, by clicking in the left column on ” Appearance> Menu “.
At this point, on the screen that appears, select the menu you don’t like from the list (in your case there will probably be only one). Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ” Delete menu “. Then confirm by clicking on ” Ok “.
This way your menu will be deleted and you can create a new one.
Conclusion
As you have seen, creating a menu in WordPress is a simple and intuitive operation, which takes little time.
Of course, I showed you “how to edit menu in WordPress?” but if you want to add more advanced features you can easily buy a paid plugin to further enrich your menu.
If you liked the article or if you need clarification, feel free to leave me a comment below. I’ll be happy to answer you! You can also read this: Why build websites with WordPress?
