WordPress Menus

A menu is a list of links which helps your visitors to move on the site. Most sites have a main menu at the top and a footer menu. There are two ways to build menus in WordPress, and which one you use depends on your theme.

Classic themes: Appearance > Menus

In a classic theme, go to Appearance > Menus.

  1. Click create a new menu and give it a name.
  2. Add pages, posts, categories or custom links from the left boxes.
  3. Drag the items to change the order. Drag an item a little to the right to make it a sub item (a dropdown).
  4. Choose a Display location (for example Primary Menu) and click Save Menu.

A menu is really a taxonomy of the type nav_menu, and each link is a post of type nav_menu_item. WP-CLI can build one for you:

Terminal output

$ wp post create –post_type=page –post_title="About" –post_status=publish –porcelain
5
$ wp menu create "Main Menu"
Success: Created menu 2.
$ wp menu item add-post main-menu 5 –title="About us"
Success: Menu item added.
$ wp menu item add-custom main-menu "Our Blog" http://example.com/blog/
Success: Menu item added.
$ wp menu item list main-menu –fields=db_id,title,type,link
db_id title type link
6 About us post_type http://example.com/about/
7 Our Blog custom http://example.com/blog/

Block themes: the Navigation block

Block themes like Twenty Twenty-Five do not have the Menus screen. You edit the menu in the Site Editor (Appearance > Editor > Navigation), or directly inside the Header, by selecting the Navigation block. The menu is saved as a post of the type wp_navigation:

Terminal output

$ wp post list –post_type=wp_navigation –post_status=any –fields=ID,post_title,post_type
ID post_title post_type
4 Navigation wp_navigation

Good menu practices

  • Keep the main menu short, five to seven items.
  • Use clear names that tell where the link goes.
  • Do not open normal links in a new tab.
  • Make sure it also works on the phone.
Note: If your menu is missing after you change the theme, the new theme has different menu locations. Go to the menu screen and assign the menu to the new location again. Next: WordPress Widgets.

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