A WordPress website would be nothing without menus, submenus, and other options. Making these menus customizable to suit your preferences the inside of WordPress is also easy. So the WordPress menus are a “front line’ tool that will help you get the best search rankings and keep users on the website.
The dedicated screens in WordPress reveal how intricate your menus are. It is also possible to display menus at multiple places on your website. If you’ve got the programming skills, you are able to alter your WordPress menu with nearly limitless possibilities.
In this article, we’ll give you a comprehensive guide for making the WordPress menu. We’ll also explain how you can take this functionality and improve it in various ways.
The Anatomy of a WordPress Menu
For those who aren’t familiar, a WordPress menu is usually an assortment of hyperlinks ( including dropdowns). It’s an easy element of functionality that’s just an additional “vertebra” in the backbone of your website.
Image alt=”An illustration of an example of a WordPress menu.” src=”https://kinsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/wordpress-menu.png”/>
A good example of the WordPress menu.
We’ll discuss how menus are displayed on a site in greater depth in the next section. As of now, remember that they are able to be displayed wherever you’d like to show them. There may be only the option of selecting a handful of choices (based on the widget area). In terms of technicality, however, a menu can be positioned anywhere.
Of course that the WordPress menu is crucial to navigate a site. When you’ve got a clearly well-defined navigation menu, it can help visitors navigate your website and ensure that the website’s bounce lower.
They also serve a different purpose also: your menus aid in your SEO (SEO). Optimizing your WordPress menu to be optimized for SEO will be more about the things you choose you remove than what to add. In the beginning, you could eliminate elements like tag clouds and make sure that the number of hyperlinks that you have included is to a minimum.
Although Google allows you to include more than 250 external links per page, however, making sure you keep a ” link value” at a high level is crucial. So, reducing the amount of linked externally will benefit your site well in the long run.
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The Different Types of WordPress Menu Structures
As you’ve probably guessed the application’s needs, you may select various WordPress menu layouts.
Menus for headers, like are most commonly used since they are the main navigation on the website. There are often smaller menus over the main navigation because it is a good location to display the icons of social networks, such as search bars and much more.
The site of Kinsta’s partner SAU/CAL offers a “fly-in” menu that includes navigation as well as social hyperlinks:
Image alt=”A fly-in display that shows two options.” src=”https://kinsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/fly-in-menu.png”/>
The fly-in display shows two menus.
This menu demonstrates that there are many more uses for using a WordPress menu than just navigating the site. Utilizing WordPress’s built-in functionality (more about this in the future), you can build menus for nearly anything you want.
In the same way that header navigation is popular as navigation, the footer is equally popular. This area is typically used to repeat your main navigation to users scrolling down. It’s also a great location to provide more contextual links to your products and services.
The menu is in the footer of Kinsta.
There are also menus in an additional sidebar if the site utilizes it:
An example of navigation is in the sidebar.
While you won’t see the primary navigation here in a lot of instances, it’s still a popular location to look for social networks archives of blog posts and much more.
How to Create a Custom WordPress Menu (3 Methods)
The creation of a WordPress menu is a simple procedure, no matter your expertise level. There are three methods to get the job accomplished: utilize WordPress’s built-in functionality or use a plugin to the right specifications, or work by using codes.
We’ll then show you how to make a WordPress menu with three methods.
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- Use WordPress’ Built-in Functionality to Create Your Menu
WordPress includes built-in tools to allow you to create menus. The dedicated screen inside the WordPress admin interface will be familiar to anyone, not just the most recent users.
It’s the WordPress display of menus.
Naturally, making use of the native function to build your WordPress menu comes with many benefits. In the beginning, you’ll enjoy full compatibility with your website. You can also create your menus with familiar tools and interfaces.
To find it, go over to your menus > Appearance page on WordPress:
It’s the WordPress Menus link.
The screen splits into various sections. The top of the screen is where there’s a choice to choose a menu that’s currently available or create one:
The image alt=”The dropdown menu for selecting a menu.” src=”https://kinsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/create-new-wordpress-menu.png”/>
The dropdown menu for selection.
If you decide to create an entirely new menu, you need to give it the name you want and look through the menu settings section:
Image alt=”The Menu Settings section.” src=”https://kinsta.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/menu-settings.png”/>
There is a “Menu Settings” section.
There are plenty of boxes here. However, you’ll have two major choices to make:
- The top-level pages are added to the navigation menu by default. “Top-level” here refers to pages that you create in WordPress that aren’t the children or siblings of pages. For instance, a blog post isn’t an upper-level page since it has an archive page as a parent in a number of instances (e.g. /blog). However, the contact page will usually be high-level since it doesn’t typically have an associated page.
- The menu’s location. Each theme will include menu places. If you do not alter the theme’s main files, theme designers have coded the menu places. Certain themes will let you customize the settings of their themes.
When you’re done when you’re ready, hit on the Make Menu button. It will then refresh and indicate that you’re now in the new menu. After that, look to the left part of the screen:
The menu items are arranged in the accordion menu.
This screen displays all taxonomies, posts, pages, and other linkable assets on your website. The menu is created by clicking on the checkboxes on the left side and then selecting to click the “Add to menu” button.
This will move them to the center on the Menus screen:
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