WiscWeb - Creating and Editing a Menu

In this document:

• Navigate to the Menus section
• Create a new menu
• Add and remove items to your menu
• Set a Main and Utility Links menu
• Create a drop down menu
• Additional Resources

Accessing your WordPress Menus

To find where to create and edit menus within your WordPress site, hover your mouse over the Appearance section on the left, and click on the Menus option that appears.

If you have never created a menu, this section will be empty and you're prompted to create your first one.

Creating a new menu

To create this new menu, begin by giving it a name such as Main Menu, and click Create Menu at the bottom right. Once this is created, you can add pages and other created content to this menu. To add items, click in the check box for the item you want and then click Add to Menu. The items will move into the right section of the screen. To remove items from your menu, you could click on the down arrow next to the item you wish to delete, and click Remove.

You can reorder the menu items by dragging them to the location you want them to appear in the menu. Once you have made the necessary changes to your menu, click Save Menu in the lower right corner of the screen.

Set a Main and Utility Links menu

Once you have created your menu(s), you also have the option to set it to a predefined location within your site. Those two locations are the Main Menu and the Utility Links Menu. The main menu of a site is the main navigation bar that appears at the top of each content item within your site. The utility links menu appears in the upper right corner of each content item within your site. To set either of these values, click in the appropriate check box and then click Save Menu at the bottom right of your options area.

Create a drop down menu

Many menus are set up to allow users to choose from a list of navigation items within them:

This is a nice way to group several pages together for users to easily navigate to the topic area of their choice. This effect is achieved by dragging an item just under another item to create a sub-item.

Once you applied these changes, click the Save Menu option at the bottom right of the options area.

Please be aware: In the UW Theme, when a page has sub-items below it that page is no longer a clickable link. For example, in the screenshot above, the Program page will not be linked in the main menu. Be sure to consider this when creating your navigation structures. To avoid this, instead use the Custom Link option in the left, set the URL to #, and then use the Link Text to create your menu label. Then click the Add to Menu button, and follow the steps to add sub-items to this new label.

 

Other uses of menus

Aside from the Main and Utility Links menus, you can also create addition menus to be used for navigation on pages themselves. This can be accomplished by creating a menu, leaving the location values unchecked, and then on a page using the Group of Links page element to apply this predefined menu. A menu can also be used as a footer navigation as well.

Be sure to test your menus after you create and apply them to ensure that they are working as expected.

Additional Resources

• Creating and Editing a Menu
• Group of Links Page Element
• Creating and Editing a Footer
• Creating Parent / Child Page Structures

See Also:

• WiscWeb - Creating and Editing a Footer
• WiscWeb - Group of Links Page Element