Do you want to add a navigation menu to your WordPress site?
WordPress comes with a drag and drop menu interface that you can use to create header menus, menus with dropdown options, and more.
In this step by step guide, we will show you how to easily add a navigation menu in WordPress.
What is a Navigation Menu?
A navigation menu is a list of a links pointing to important areas of a website. They are usually presented as a horizontal bar of links at the top of every page on a website.
Navigation menus give your site structure and help visitors find what they’re looking for. Here’s how the navigation menu looks on WPBeginner:
WordPress makes it really easy to add menus and sub-menus. You can add links to your most important pages, categories or topics, blog posts, and even custom links such as your social media profile.
The exact location of your menu will depend on your WordPress theme. Most themes will have several options, so you can create different menus that can be displayed in different places.
For instance, most WordPress themes come with a primary menu that appears on the top. Some themes may include a secondary menu, a footer menu, or a mobile navigation menu as well.
Video Tutorial
If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.
Creating Your First Custom Navigation Menu
To create a navigation menu, you need to visit the Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress admin dashboard.
First, you need to provide a name for your menu, like ‘Top Navigation Menu’ and then click the ‘Create Menu’ button. This will expand the menu area, and it will look like this:
Next, you can choose the pages you want to add to the menu. You can either automatically add all new top-level pages, or you can select specific pages from the left column.
First, click the ‘View All’ tab to see all your site’s pages. After that click the box next to each of the pages you want to add to your menu, and then click on the ‘Add to Menu’ button.
Once your pages have been added, you can move them around by dragging and dropping them.
Note: All menus have their items listed in a vertical (top to bottom) list in the menu editor. When you put the menu live on your site, it’ll either display vertically or horizontally (left to right), depending on the location you select.
Most themes have several different locations where you can put menus. In this example, we’re using the default 2020 theme, which has 5 different locations.
After adding pages to the menu, select the location where you want to display the menu and click on the ‘Save Menu’ button.
Tip: If you’re not sure where each location is, try saving the menu in different places, then visiting your site to see how it looks. You probably won’t want to use all the locations, but you might want to use more than one.
Here’s our finished menu on the site:
Creating Drop-Down Menus in WordPress
Drop-down menus, sometimes called nested menus, are navigation menus with parent and child menu items. When you run your cursor over a parent item, all the child items will appear beneath it in a sub-menu.
To create a sub menu, drag an item below the parent item, and then drag it slightly to the right. We’ve done that with 3 sub-items beneath ‘Services’ in our menu:
Here’s the sub-menu live on the site:
You can even add multiple layers of dropdown, so that your sub menu can have a sub menu. This can end up looking at bit cluttered, and many themes do not support multi-layer drop-down menus.
In this example, you can see that ‘Logo Design’ (a child item of ‘Services’) has two child items of its own.
Adding Categories to WordPress Menus
If you’re using WordPress to run a blog, then you may want to add your blog categories as a drop-down in your WordPress menu. We do this on WPBeginner:
You can easily add categories to your menu by clicking the Categories tab on the left side of the Menus screen. You may also need to click the ‘View All’ tab to see all your categories.
Simply select the categories you want to add to the menu, and then click the ‘Add to Menu’ button.
The categories will appear as regular menu items at the bottom of your menu. You can drag and drop them into position. We’re going to put all of these categories under the Blog menu item.
Do you want to have a blog page on your site that’s separate from your homepage? If so, check out our tutorial on how to create a separate page for blog posts in WordPress.
Adding Custom Links to Your WordPress Navigation Menus
Aside from categories and pages, WordPress also makes it super easy to add custom links to your menu. You can use it to link to your social media profiles, your online store, and / or other websites that you own.
You will need to use the ‘Custom Links’ tab on the Menu screen. Simply add the link along with the text you want to use in your menu.
You can even get creative and add social media icons in your menu.
Editing or Removing a Menu Item in WordPress Navigation Menus
When you add pages or categories to your custom navigation menu, WordPress uses the page title or category name as the link text. You can change this if you want.
Any menu item can be edited by clicking on the downward arrow next to it.
You can change the name of the menu item here. This is also where you can click ‘Remove’ to take the link off your menu altogether.
If you’re struggling with the drag and drop interface, then you can also move the menu item around by clicking the appropriate ‘Move’ link.
Adding WordPress Menus in Sidebars and Footers
You don’t have to just stick to the display locations for your theme. You can add navigation menus in any area that uses widgets, like your sidebar or footer.
Simply go to Appearance » Widgets and add the ‘Navigation Menu’ widget to your sidebar. Next, add a title for the widget and choose the correct menu from the ‘Select Menu’ drop down list.
Here’s an example of a custom WordPress footer menu built on Syed Balkhi website.
Going Further with Navigation Menus
If you want to create a truly epic menu with loads of links, we’ve got a tutorial on how to create a mega menu in WordPress. This lets you create a drop-down with lots of items including images.
Mega menus are a great option if you have a large site, like an online store or news site. This type of menu is used by sites like Reuters, Buzzfeed, Starbucks, etc.
We hope this article helped you learn how to add a navigation menu in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guides on how to style navigation menus in WordPress and how to create a sticky floating navigation menu in WordPress.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
I have made a navigation menu but it won’t show up on the mobile site and when I go to navigation menu settings it does not have mobile menu as an option. Do you know how I can fix this or do I need to find a different theme?
You would need to reach out to the support for your specific theme for it not displaying properly and they would be able to assist.
Thenk you Wp Begginer
You’re welcome
This helped a lot. I wanted a heads up before I started. Presented very well.
Glad our article was helpful
Thanks for the detailed guide. I have a question: how can we add a navbar (for a landing page) which links the landing page sections/elements instead of navigating to other pages. An example is Wikipedia. On any Wikipedia page, you can click on the name of the section and it will immediately go down to that section.
For that, you would want to use anchor links which we cover in our article below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-easily-add-anchor-links-in-wordpress-step-by-step/
Hi,
I created categories and added to my menu so that once a reader clicks they can find all the blog posts on that category. My problem is that I don’t want the blog name to appear at the top of the page, that is, Blogging category => Blogging category description => blog posts, how do I remove that?
That would depend on your specific theme’s styling. If you reach out to your theme’s support they should be able to assist with changing what is shown
i try to add menu item on my menu structure. even when i save menu, the website doesn’t change. why?
You would want to ensure your site or your hosting provider does not have a cache that could be causing your issue.
Great resources
Thank you
Hello, I am using Elementor and OceanWP. I set up a custom link in my menu so that when clicking on it goes to the Home page. How can I make it go instead of just to the Home page, but down the page to a certain section? I appreciate your help.
You would want to take a look at making an anchor link: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-easily-add-anchor-links-in-wordpress-step-by-step/
Pretty much there with the navigation. One question though, I have one point in my navigation “products” from there it splits into 3 other sections (drop down menu coming up). I don’t want visitors be able to access this product page as it will be empty, I want them to choose directly from the drop down menu instead of accessing the products page first. So products will be still displayed in the navigation but will be inaccessible, visitors have to click onto the drop down menu to choose what they are after. How do I do this? I m I m removing the whole products section it wont be displayed in the navi anymore, how can I make the products page inaccessible?
You can create a custom link under Appearance>Menus titled Products and link it to either a different page or # which should keep the users on the same page they are on.
Thank you for your help.I was facing the same problem
How old is this anyway?? I’m not seeing any of this on the WP page.
The steps in this article should still work for WordPress.org sites, are you on WordPress.com? https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/self-hosted-wordpress-org-vs-free-wordpress-com-infograph/
Sorry sir, which WordPress theme you’re using on WPbeginner.com?????
We are using a theme we created for our site built on the Genesis Framework, for more on what we’re using on our site you would want to take a look at our blueprint page here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/
It really helped me. very informative.Thanks
Hi! Thanks so much for this post. It helped me a lot. I have the “Karuna” theme. Whenever I add more menu options (I have 4) they are displayed in two row. I would like them all to be in one row. Is there a way to fix this? Thank you so much!
Needed to link a buy now button to woo commerce cart page. Spent two days going in circles. Tried to contact woo with little success. Then found you guys who helped solve the problem.
Often it is the little things which can stop us in our tracks. A big thank you for the simplified set of clear instructions.
Hello,
I am making a website with Ocean WP and Elementor, however I am unable to see the menu at the top of all of my pages. It only appears at the top of the home page. So people can navigate to any page from the home page, however if anyone wanted to navigate back to the home page or to another page from there, it would tricky. Do you have a solution for this? Thank you!
Thank you for these instructions, very helpful! I have a question that I think relates back to my menu but I’m not totally sure. When I click on a menu item from the home page the site address adds “aboutme” between the main address and the menu page. I do not have anything called “about me” on my site. I don’t understand why it is adding this extra piece of information to each page. Any suggestions on how to remove this “aboutme” information?
Thank you.
I learned much knowledge.
Hi. I am using Ocean WP and Elementor.
I have a menu organized, but there on one of my Nested menu dropdown sections I want the FIRST category NOT to be linked to a page (I tried to remove the link but I failed).
The nested section is as follows: THERAPY (on top)>Individual>Group
I don’t want THERAPY to lead to a page, it’s blank, it’s just a category I guess. I’ve done this in my previous site but I can’t for the life of me remember how to do it!
I did create a “page” called Therapy so it would show up in the menu options…help me obi wan kenobi you are my only hope!
Dr Karen
Hi Karen,
Add your top link Therapy as a ‘Custom Link’. In the URL field enter # sign and click add to menu. Adjust its position in the menu and then click on Save Menu button.
Aha, that’s how you do it! Thanks, great tutorials!
You’re welcome, glad you like our content
Hello,
We use the two menu system (i.e. primary/top & main/secondary menu) across our websites. And the top/primary menu does not appear on the mobile website.
One of our clients, want both the menus to be visible on the mobile site. Any suggestions on how to do that?
(The website is running on newspaper theme, if that helps.)
Suppose I want to post many articles related to android. Should I create a android page or android category in my wp menu.
Hi Ahmed,
Categories are better to sort your content into different topics. You can add a category to your website’s navigation menu and then it will show all posts filed under that category.
Hi – Thanks for providing this.
I don’t have any items in my Pages section, which is strange, because my site has several. Did I configure a setting wrong?
Lerissa
Hi Lerissa,
What happens when you click on ‘View All’ under pages?
Thanks for this illustration.
hi sir
thank you, i have started my new WordPress blog and I Stuck on the menu I don’t know how to add menu thanks for your this useful post and Your site helped me to launch my website.
Hi Manish,
Glad you found this guide helpful. You may also want to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
Hi and thanks for your support. I have a website almost completed, pretty basic but want to link the menu items to the page that relevant text exists and somehow be able to take the user back to the main menu with a back button. Can you please help.
Thanks
Hi Cyndi,
The tutorial above allows you to link to pages and add them to navigation menus. Seems like you want something a little different, can you please provide more details?
Thanks for trying to help. I am not looking for anything unusual with my menu in the website. I have menu items setup as Home, About Us, Services, Contact. The menu name is First Menu and set to primary. What happens is that I click on Home and the page flashes but I don’t go anywhere. This happens with all of the menu items I click on. Any suggestions what I have setup incorrectly?
Thanks
Hi Cyndi,
You can try this. Go to Apperance » Menus page and click on create a new menu. The following the instructions in the article create new menu by adding your pages from left column to the right. After that select the location for your menu ‘Primary’ and then click on save menu button.
If this doesn’t solve your issue, then preview your website with a default theme. If your navigation menu works as expected with the default theme, then there may be some issue with your current theme. Hope this helps.
This was so helpful and it worked beautifully on my laptop. But on my iPhone the submenu categories I dropped into my Blog menu (which all show up indented as they should) also include the description I created of the category. On my laptop that appears on the archive page for each category but on the phone it appears in the dropdown, which makes it all look muddy. Is there a way to create yet another indent for just the descriptions under each category, effectively nesting three levels?
Thanks very much for any suggestions.
Hi there, I have created a nested menu which looks great in the desktop version, but when it gets to the mobile version everything nested is shown on the menu at once! It creates a super long menu page. I have a responsive theme and am unsure if can be fixed.
Thanks for making such an easy to follow video. It helped a lot and I quickly got my issue figured out.
I have problems that wordpress doesn´t let me add any category any more or even is deleting and changing place of some which were once added. Anybody know what can be a reason?
My website don’t have option of primary, secondary but main and footer menu. I want to add top menu in my website can you please guide me how to add top menu. also in my portfolio page whatever items I am adding is not showing so kindly help me out regarding that. Thanks in advance.
I thought this was an explanation about how to add a navigation menu in your WordPress site, but it’s missing the vital code to actually add it to your website. This is the dumbest tutorial (or article title) I have ever seen.
Hi John,
You may want to check out our tutorial on how to add custom navigation menus in WordPress.
I have a site where I want to display custom menu which is a category – like travel. It works fine, but it displayed – Category – Travel above posts. How can I hide that? I’m using wordpress.com and using free plan.
Suppose my website is example.com
I want to create a tab called HOME and place it menu.
Whenever I am creating this HOME, the url does not accept example.com
It is becoming as example.com/home.
What should I do?
Hi Prachi,
WordPress already has a navigation menu that you can use. On the navigation menus screen click on the pages and then click on View All. There you will see all your pages and an item called Home. Select home and then click on add to menu button.
I have followed the above instruction. My menu though will not actually appear on any of the sites pages. May I have some guidance please ?
John
Have tried a different themes? Sometime the themes you are using is not supported to some of these futures.
I created a second dropdown menu but when I click the main menu I see the dropdown but it takes to a blank page. Please help.
Hello,
When I log into my wordpress, my edit menu looks completely different and I am having a significantly difficult time adding menus and customizing my site because of this. Can you help me?
Hi, Thanks for the nice detailed explanation of adding menu, but how to call this menu ????
Thanks for helping me out.
Keep helping others.
Hi, I’m really struggling with navigation for a clients site and am not sure how to explain what i need. When you click on a Top-Level menu item, I want it to open an additional menu underneath. Each Top-Level will have a different sub menu that stays activated whilst you are in that area of the site.
Like on this website
When you click on say “Commercial Solar” another menu appears and allows you to browse the commercial solar area. The top menu stays selected throughout.
Any help you can offer would be great! Thanks Lucy
Hi Lucy,
Please see our article on how to add a menu item without linking to a page.
I want to link my pages to headers on the home page that synopsize those pages. How to do? (Like “Our History,” “Who We Are,” etc.) I have a page for each of those but a small blurb on each on the Home Page. Would like for visitors to click on the header of each of those.
Hi, I need for my main navigation window to ‘push up’ as opposed to ‘drop down’. I’m using Google Doubleclick Ad Exchange for display ads and they claim that my drop down menu could create false clicks on ads. Is there anyway that I could make it push up?
Thank you so much for this, been trying to figure out how to create drop down menus, this really helped!
hello
I Am A Beginner Not Professional , I Am Using A Template Theme & You Can See It In My Site .. I Have An Arabic Menu .. I Need To Create An English Menu Underneath It So English Speaking Browser Can Access The English Pages .. Thanks A Lot .. Isa
I think you need to have multi WordPress websites and insert a code in your landing page to redirect your visitors based on their computers language or countries. Each of these website will have a WordPress with its language because it is does not make sense to me if I log in into an Arabic websites that has only Menu in English or the opposite.
Helo – I have a subdomain for . I really do not use it except to store pages. On one experiment, I use a css code for a page to hide header and navbar. But since then when I removed the css code and tried to create a menu, the nav bar will not show. I am quite familuar with wordpress menus and how to place them. But I just cannot get this one to show. I exported some pages into this subdomain and tried to create a menu – but it is no use – it just will not show. This is what gets me about wordpress – you never know when or how it is going to go haywire. Would ou know what the matter is?
How can I add a drop down menu in an area of a page other than my sidebar widget?
HI there,
I was actually wondering if the custom menu takes the place of the default navigation menu. How does it effect the existing default menu and its nesting?
I would have to remember to add my pages to the custom menu.
It may sound silly, but this seems very complicated to me.
I wanted to make a few pages unclickable (like “reviews”) and I like the eventual idea of sub nesting
Thanks for putting so much energy into this article. Mary
Hi all
how could i add a menu on a certain page of my website? (i don’t need the menu to appear on the home page or the front page)
thank you all
You need to install and activate plugin called (Page Specific Menu items)
How to make this plugin work?
Create a menu from appearance > menus
Select the menu you want to use from settings > PS MenuItems > Select Menu
Assign the menu to menu location from appearance > menus
Check the items you want to hide from pages > edit > Page Specific Menu Items
View the page and the selected items should be gone.
super to quickly understand
Hey bro, i have a question for you.
How to create side menu like this
thank bro.
Can be achieved using CSS and JavaScript. See our article on how to add a slide panel menu in WordPress themes, and try using it as a starting point.
Hi, I don’t see all those fancy options (e.g., drag and drop sub menus etc) on my FREE wordpress site. I wonder if the information you gave is for the premium wordpress version. Thanks
Hi Zac,
These options described in the tutorial are available in self hosted WordPress.org sites. You are probably using a free WordPress.com website. Please see our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org vs free WordPress.com blog.
Thank your for this video. It all seems very simple, but for me when I open wordpress, I do not have the option to choose “appearance.” There is just a link for “menu.” I have created a menu that appears on my blog, but I cannot add categories to it, so the menu is basically useless. When you click on, say, “travel planning” in the menu, it won’t take you to all the article about travel planning, just to something random. I am working on an 11″ laptop, and I read something that said possibly the issue is the size of the screen? If so, I am not sure how to work around that since I travel long term and this is all I have to use. Do you have any suggestions? I really want the menu to work so people can find what they’re looking for! Thanks! Bridget
Hello,
under the menu theme location, i’m not seeing ‘Primary’, ‘Secondary’, thus the pages I added were not shown on the main header, can you please help.
Thanks much