Creating and Organizing Menus in WordPress

In this tutorial we will go over creating and organizing your menu and any submenus you may have.

Editing Your Primary Menu

To access your menu, first make sure you’ve added /wp-admin to the end of your website url.

In the left toolbar, scroll until you see Appearance > Menu.

This will take you to this page:

  1. Selecting a Menu to Edit: This is where you can choose which menu to edit. By default, WordPress will give you a Primary menu and a Social menu.
  2. Menu Structure: Your Primary menu should already have certain pages in your menu created. If you look to the right of each block, you can see what kind of post it is (ex. Page, Blog post, etc) and select the dropdown arrow to either rename, reorder, or delete the page. You can also easily reorder your pages by dragging them around. 
  3. Menu Settings: Here you can choose where you want your menu to be displayed. Keeping the Primary box checked makes sure your menu stays at the top and is clearly visible. A Footer menu moves your menu to the bottom of each page. The Social Links menu, depending on your theme, will show up under the Primary menu. Here is an example where your Primary and Social Links menu will be placed: 
  4. Pages: In the lefthand menu, you will see several different things you can add to your menu. This first one is adding a Page. Pages are good for organizing your content into broader categories. It will automatically show you any pages you have already created. If you would like to add a new page to your menu, click the checkbox to the left of the name and hit Add to Menu. You will then see it pop up in the area we talked about in #2.
  5. Posts: The next thing in this menu you will see is Posts. Posts, unlike Pages, are where you will write your individual posts/articles. Let’s say you’re keeping a travel blog on your trip to Spain, France, and Germany. You can create 3 different pages for each country. Within each page, you can add posts and images relating to each. You can add posts the same way you add pages.
  6. Custom Links: Here you can input an external link you would like to be displayed in your menu. This is for any relevant websites you want your audience to be able to find in your menu.
  7. Categories: Adding a category is exactly like adding a page or post. You will see any categories you’ve previously created and will be able to check the ones you want and add them to your menu. Adding a category to your main menu is useful if you want all your tagged posts in one easily accessible place.

Creating Submenus

Creating submenus are super easy! So, you have your primary menu organized the way you want it. However, you’d like to add a submenu to one of your tabs. No problem!

1) In the lefthand menu under Add menu items, select if you’d like to add a Page, Post, Custom Link, or Category and add that to your menu. If it’s already in your menu, great!

2) Everything in your menu should be evenly aligned and should look something like this:

3) Hover over and grab the item you want to move. In this example, we will grab “Baking”. Then drag it under and a little to right of whichever item you want it to go under. Your menu will now look like this:

It will let you know it’s a sub item by being a little displaced and by stating next to the title that it is a sub item.

And that’s it! When we go to the home page and hover over “Blog”, the sub menu will pop up like this:

We hope you found this helpful! Make sure to check out our other WordPress tutorials!