Trying to add navigation menu but don’t know how to add it? Nothing to worry. Go through this article and know ‘How to add navigation menu in wordpress’. Each website has navigation menu which contains links of posts, pages or categories and it is one of the best structural elements of an ideal site. Creating custom navigation menu is a must-have if you want to yield better user-experience from visitors. As it contains various links directed at some specific URLs, you can go to a particular page, post or category just by clicking on your target texts or URL. No need to go to every post and search for what you are trying to find out.
Page Contents
What Is Navigation Menu?
Navigation menu is a kind of menu in the navigation bar that contains links on various pages, posts, categories or other web resources. It is generally placed on the header. However, you can create an individual menu containing some specific links and place it on the footer.
Here, all the red colored words individually represent an individual menu item and all the menu items stay inside the horizontal navigation bar that has been marked with a rectangular field. The visitors cannot access or see the title of the navigation menu because it is on the back end side, rather they can interact with the items placed under the menu.
How to Add Navigation Menu?
You can add navigation menu to you website and it is quiet easy. No need to be technical, as wordpress has made it super easy. You can add navigation menu but before it locate the ‘Menus‘ sub-menu which is located under ‘Appearance‘. It looks something like this.
Locate Menus
So, click on the ‘ Menus’ and it will take you to a new location wherefrom you can create new menu for your wordpress site. Now, you can see a location that looks like something this. As you have just begun to create a new site and customise it, there is no existing menu and you need to create a new one, so click on the ” Create a new menu” button located at the upper part of the page( marked by one).
Create a new Menu
Click on it and it will take you to a new location to create a new menu. It gives you a rectangular blank field to type the name of your menu( marked by two). You need to provide a name to the field to create a new navigation menu. So, type the name of the menu and click on ” Create menu“.
Assign Locations to Your Menu
So far you have created the navigation menus. Now, you need to assign locations to your menu. All wordpress themes—free or premium provides you 2-5 menu locations. Here, menu location implies that where your menu appears on your website. Generally, the menu locations may be of the following kind, such as:
- Primary
- Secondary
- Mobile
- Footer Menu
- Social Links Menu
- Desktop Expanded
- Desktop Horizontal etc.
You can see that the current theme has three Display locations for menu. You can choose anyone. Here, two types of buttons are available, namely, auto add pages and display locations.To choose a menu location, just check the button located at the left of the location and click on ‘save menu’ to save your changes.
Add Items to the Navigation Menu
You need to add items to the menu that you have created. As usual, you can add several types of items like pages, posts, categories etc. Most of the webmasters add pages and categories to the navigation menu. Also, you can add posts, too, if needed.
Add items to the menu. To add items to the menu, go to the left side of the same location and you can see ‘Add menu items’ on the upper part. Under this, you can see three options like ‘Most Recent, View All and Search.
To add pages, click on the triangular icon located at the right side of ‘pages’ and you can see the pages. Keep in mind that you can see only those pages which are published. If your site has no page, then you have to add new pages. To add new pages, come to pages along the wp-admin dashboard and click ‘Add’. Now, some pages are clearly seen and to add these as menu items, just check the buttons located at the left side of each page title . Once the buttons are checked, click on ‘Add to Menu‘. Also, you can add new pages automatically to your menu and for this just check the button labelled’ Automatically add new top-level-pages to this menu‘. Want to look? see it above.
Add Categories to the Navigation Menu
You can add categories to the Navigation Menu by visiting menus>>categories. To add categories to your menu, click on ‘Menus’ under ‘Appearance’. The menu page appears and along the left side, you can see pages, posts, custom links and categories. Go to Categories and expand it. It has three type of buttons like ‘Most Used, View All and Search’. Clicking on each button, you can see and select the category items. I opened the categories and saw the items from ‘Most Used’ button. To select the category items, just click on button located beside each category, scroll down and click on ‘Add to Menu’.
Thus you can add as many categories as you like but prior to this, you need to create categories. If you have not created new categories, then you can do that by visiting posts>>categories.
How to Add Custom Links to the Navigation Menu?
Adding custom links to the navigation menu is a good practice and it allows you to add pages, posts or categories. Go to the menu page and locate ‘Custom Links’ located at the left side of the same page. Click on ‘Custom Links’ to open it. Once it opened, you can see two fields, one is for typing custom URL and other is for entering Link Text. In the URL field, you have to type or paste the URL of the post or page that you want to link to your website. In the Link Text field, you have to write the link text that is clickable and you can write anything that is suitable for your post. Once it gets completed, com down and click on ‘Add to Menu’ to save your changes.
Thus you can add custom links to the navigation menu. You can ask me, why to add custom link to the navigation menu? Actually, the post or page that you want to add to your navigation menu may be long, consisting of many characters and adding such kind of article may reduce text area. Furthermore, for attractive title, if needed you can use link text and it is possible through custom links.
How to Add Drop-Down Menus?
So far, you have grasped how to add navigation menu but don’t know how to add it as drop- down ? Nothing to worry! You are using wordpress and it has made everything easy.
How to Add Menu as Widget in the Sidebar?
You can add menu as widget in the sidebar. To add menu as widget in the sidebar, you have to follow the following steps:
Go to Appearance>>widget from your wp-admin dashboard. Click on widget and it looks like this:
There are many widgets available in the widget area. It also has navigation menu. You can add any widget in the sidebar. To add a menu in the sidebar, just click on the navigation menu in the widget area and it when opens, looks like this:
Now, you can see that the Navigation menu has been selected and , by default, it has been set to the sidebar. Now, to add it, scroll down and click on ‘Add widget’.
Now, go to sidebar located at the upper right area of the same page. Here, you can see all kind of posts, pages or menu that you have added therein. Click on the navigation menu to expand it. Write the title of the menu in the title box and close the button. Keep in mind that here menu refers to that menu which you have created from menu option under Appearance. Here, all items appears under the menu.
How to Add Menu in the Footer?
You can add menu in the footer of your website in the same way as you have done in the sidebar but while selecting its location, click on the Footer instead of sidebar in the widget page. There are many footers like F1, F2 F3 etc. Based on your needs, you can choose a specific location in the Footer area.
