Can your visitors find your About page or main categories within a few seconds? If not, your navigation menu needs some attention.
A navigation menu is a list of links, usually placed in the header, that helps people move around your website. It is often the first thing visitors use after landing on your site.
What is a navigation menu in WordPress?
Think of it as the signboards in a shopping mall. They point you to the right shop without any confusion. Similarly, a menu points visitors to your important pages, posts, categories or even external links. You can create as many menus as you like, for example one for the header and another for the footer.
Menus can also have sub-items, which appear as a drop-down when someone hovers over the main item. Our guide shows how to make a drop-down menu in WordPress.
How to create a navigation menu
If you use a classic theme, here are the steps:
- First, go to Appearance → Menus and type a name for your new menu.
- Now, click Create Menu.
- Next, tick the pages, posts or categories on the left and click Add to Menu.
- Here, drag the items to reorder them. Drag an item slightly to the right to make it a sub-item.
- Finally, choose a Display location, such as the primary menu, and click Save Menu.
For a more detailed walkthrough, see our lesson on adding a menu in WordPress.
Keep your main menu short and clear. Around five to seven top-level items are enough for most websites.
Menus in block themes
Block themes don't use the Menus screen. Instead, they use the Navigation block. You can edit it from Appearance → Editor → Navigation, or by selecting the Navigation block inside your header template.
The idea stays the same, though. You still add links, reorder them and nest sub-items, only with blocks instead of a form.
A clear navigation menu makes your site easy to explore. That's it. If your menu is not showing up where you expect, tell us in the comment section below.