Build navigation menus

Table of Contents

Navigation block

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menus with the navigation block, take a look at the list of pages in your site and make sure you don’t have a bunch of unpublished, unnecessary or draft pages.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. You can assign parents and manipulate pages appear in by assigning them a number in the Quick Edit interface.

Create menus

The basic process for creating all menus is the same. It’s easiest to create new menus in the Block Editor, which means you do it right from a page where you’re planning to place a menu.

Create your site’s main navigation in the block editor

Your main navigation displays across the top of every page, just below the header. Depending on which page template you choose, the main navigation will either link directly to a first-level page or will trigger a dropdown menu that shows successive levels of the site’s content. 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

Create a subnavigation in the block editor

Subnavigations appear on interior pages and show all of the pages within ta particular section. Recommended steps:

• Select the navigation block in your page’s left column (you may want to open the list view to find it)
• Starting with an empty navigation menu, click the + under “Menu” in the right column.
  • If you’re updating an existing subnav that’s used on several pages, choose that subnav and just delete its contents. That’ll cause your updates to be pushed out to all other instances of the menu. (you’ll only have to do this once per menu)
• Add a “Page list”
• Click on the words “Page List” to open the page list settings.
• In the “Parent” field type the name of the parent page for this subnavigation. This will be one of the pages in your header navigation.
  • Any new pages added to this section will automatically be added to the menu as long as they have the designated “Parent”
• Save. (That’s it!)

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”

Manually edit navigation menus

Note: This applies only to menus that have been “detached” from the page list. If you follow the “Create a subnavigation” instructions on this page, you will NOT need to edit your subnavs when you add new pages.

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