Build navigation menus

Before you start creating menus with the navigation block, take a look at the list of pages in your site and make sure you don’t have a bunch of unpublished, unnecessary or draft pages. If you do, clear out the clutter.

Make sure the pages you do have are nested properly. All sub pages (pages other than the five or six in your main navigation) should be assigned to a parent page.

Create menus

The process for creating all menus is the same and can be done in either the Block editor or the Site editor.

Create subnavigations in the Site editor

Once you’ve created a main navigation menu that includes all of your site’s pages

  • Open the Site editor and click Navigation
  • Click whatever you called your main navigation
  • Click the three-dot menu and select Duplicate
  • Decide which submenu you’d like to create (ie. the menu for your ‘About’ section)
  • In the copy, click the three dot menu and select Rename
  • Rename it whatever makes sense for the menu you’re creating (ie. About sub)
  • Identify the pages you want to keep in this menu and delete all the others.
  • Save
  • Repeat for each section

Video tutorial Make a Subnavigation (2:18)

Create your site’s main navigation in the block editor

Recommended steps

  • Select a navigation block that’s on the page
  • Click on Create new menu
  • Add page list – this will add every page in your site to your menu
  • Open list view (if you haven’t already) and select and delete any pages that shouldn’t be part of your site’s public navigation
  • You’ll receive a warning about ‘detaching’ the menu. this is fine. Click OK
  • In the list view, drag pages up or down to reflect the order you’d like.
  • When you’re satisfied, click on the navigation block in the list view and then shift over to the Settings tab.
  • Scroll down to Advanced, open the section. In Advanced, rename the menu something meaningful. (i.e. ‘full site’, ‘all pages’, etc.)
  • Click update, update

Place navigation menus

Video tutorial Assign an menu to a page (:34)

Once you’ve created your menus, placing them is simply a matter of selecting the navigation block and clicking on the three-dot kebab menu over in the block editor. From there you can select the menu you want from the ones you’ve created. If you need something different, just choose “Create New Menu”

Edit navigation menus

Video tutorial Edit a menu (2:53)

  • Click on any navigation block to edit the menu it contains.
  • Use the + to add a page link, a button
  • Use list view to move things into the right places

When you hit “Update” wordpress will tell you you’re not only updating the page, but also the saved menu. That means wherever that menu appears, your change will appear there too. (If you don’t want that to happen, change the name of your menu in Block editor column’s Advanced section)

Rename or delete a menu

  1. Go to Appearance>Editor
  2. Select Navigation – this will show you a list of your navigation menus
  3. Clicking on each will show you what’s in them.
  4. Click on the three dots to see choices “Rename, Delete, Duplicate”
  5. Choose your action and do the thing