Building / Editing the Site Navigation Menu

Building / Editing the Site Navigation Menu

Creating a Navigation Menu and Adding Items


From the WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Menus



If you are creating a new navigation menu from scratch, then enter the name of the navigation menu and click Create Menu



To add pages to the navigation menu, select the pages you want to add from the Add menu items box, and then click Add to Menu



The selected pages will now appear in the Menu structure section.



NOTE:  Any new items that you add to an existing menu that already contains navigation items will automatically be placed at the very bottom of the list of items.

The order in which the pages are stacked in the Menu structure section will determine the order in which they are displayed on the website.
To change the order of the menu items, click-and-drag each item up or down.  As you do so, a dotted outline will appear to show you where an item will be placed in the stacking order if you release the mouse button at that point.



Once all of the menu items are stacked in the order that you want them, click Save Menu to save the changes that you have made



Your navigation menu will now display as you have specified on the website



Selecting an Existing Navigation Menu to Edit:


If your website contains more than one navigation menu (i.e., you might have a main navigation menu for the header section of the website and another smaller navigation menu for the footer, etc), then when you go to the Menu editor page you will need to make sure that you have the correct navigation menu selected before you begin editing.

To do this, click the drop-down menu next to Select a menu to edit



Then click Select



You should now see the selected menu as the active menu in the menu editor.


If you want to add a sub-navigation item (i.e., an item that appears in a drop-down menu underneath one of the top-level navigation items), the process is the same with one small difference:  When you click-and-drag an item to place it in the menu's stacking order, make sure that the dotted outline placement box appears indented underneath the desire top-level item before you drop it in place.



Once you save these changes to your navigation menu, the menu will now have a drop-down menu with these items.



You can also have sub-menus within sub-menus by having items indented under already indented items.



So in this example, Service 3, Service 4 and Service 5 all become drop-down menu items underneath Service 2 which is already a drop-down menu item underneath Services.


Adding Different Post Types:

In the menu editor, by default you can add Pages, Posts, Custom Links and Post Categories as items to the navigation menu.
If you want to add other types of content such as Products and Product Categories, scroll to the very top of the menu editor page and you will see at the top-right corner of the screen a drop-down tab labelled Screen Options.



Click on that tab to reveal it's options.



Then select the types of items that you want to add.



You don't need to save these settings;  the selected item types will now be immediately available under the Add menu items section.



Now if you want to add product categories to the navigation menu, click on the Product categories tab, select the product categories that you want to add to the navigation menu and then click Add to Menu.



Then you can place them in the stacking order of the navigation items just like any other item.





If you want to add a link to a page or article on another website, you can do this by adding a Custom Link to the navigation menu.
To do this, click on the Custom Links tab.



In the URL field, enter the address of the page or article that you want the link to go to.
In the Link Text field, enter the text that you want to appear in the navigation menu.
Then click Add to Menu and place it where you want it to appear in the menu's stacking order.



By default, any item that you add to the navigation menu will open it's link in the existing tab/window when you click on it.  Sometimes you might want a navigation item to open in new tab/window (particularly if it's a custom link to a page/article on another website so that you don't take your visitors completely away from your own website).
To do this, first open the Menu editor's Screen Options tab and make sure the Link Target option is selected under Show advanced menu properties.



Then in the Menu structure section, click the drop-down arrow on the right side of the navigation item that you want to have open in a new tab/window.



This will reveal a number of options for that navigation item.  Select the Open link in a new tab option.



Then save the menu.  That navigation item will now open it's link in a new tab when clicked on the website.

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