Do you want to create a sticky floating navigation menu in WordPress?
The top navigation menu has links to the most important sections of your website. By making this menu sticky, it will stay on the screen as the user scrolls down the page so it’s always within easy reach.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add a sticky floating navigation menu to your WordPress website.
What is a Sticky Floating Navigation Menu?
A sticky or floating navigation menu is one that ‘sticks’ to the top of the screen as a user scrolls down. This means the menu is onscreen at all times.
Usually, the top navigation menu in WordPress contains links to your website’s most important sections. By making this menu sticky, visitors can click on those links at any time, without having to scroll.
This is a good user experience, which can help increase pageviews and decrease bounce rate in WordPress.
If you run an online store, then the top navigation menu likely has links to the customer cart, product categories, and product search. By making the top menu sticky, you can often reduce cart abandonment rates and get more sales.
Some of the best WordPress themes have built-in support for sticky navigation menus. With that being said, it’s worth checking your theme settings by going to Themes » Customize in the WordPress dashboard and looking for any settings labelled ‘Menus.’
If you’re not sure whether your theme supports sticky menus, then you can check the theme’s documentation or even contact the developer for help. For more information, please see our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.
If your theme doesn’t have built-in support for sticky menus, then let’s see how you can easily create a sticky floating navigation menu in any WordPress theme or WooCommerce store. Simply use the quick links below to jump to the method you want to use.
Method 1: Add Your Sticky Floating Navigation Menu Using a Plugin (Recommended)
The easiest way to add a sticky navigation menu in WordPress is by using Sticky Menu (or Anything!) on Scroll. This plugin allows you to make any element sticky, including menus.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Settings » Sticky Menu (or Anything!).
To start, you’ll need to get the CSS ID of the navigation menu that you want to make sticky, by using your browser’s inspect tool.
Simply visit your website and hover your mouse over the navigation menu. After that, just right-click and select ‘Inspect’ from the browser’s menu.
This will open a new panel inside the browser, where you can see the source code for the navigation menu.
You need to find the line of code that relates to the menu, or your site header. It will look something like this:
<pre class="wp-block-syntaxhighlighter-code">
<nav id="site-navigation" class="main-navigation" role="navigation">
</pre>
If you’re struggling to find the code, then hover your mouse over the different lines of code in the ‘Inspect’ panel. The browser will highlight the navigation menu when you find the right code, as you can see in the following image.
In this case, the navigation menu’s CSS ID is site-navigation.
Once you have this information, switch back to your WordPress dashboard and add it to the ‘Sticky Element (Required)’ field.
You’ll also need to add a hash character (#) at the start, so site-navigation becomes #site-navigation.
After that, click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to store your changes.
Now, if you visit your WordPress website and scroll, the menu should stay at the top.
Sometimes, the sticky menu may overlap some content that you don’t want to hide.
If this happens, then you’ll need to define a space between the top of your screen and the sticky navigation menu by typing a number into the ‘Space between top of page…’ field.
Sticky menus can cause problems for devices with a smaller screen, such as a mobile device. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to check the mobile version of your WordPress website from desktop.
If you’re not happy with how the menu looks, then you can ‘unstick’ it for mobile users by finding the following field: ‘Do not stick element when screen is smaller than.’
Here, type in ‘780px.’
There are some more settings to explore, but this is all you need to create a working sticky navigation menu.
When you’re happy with how the navigation menu is set up, click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.
Method 2: Manually Add a Sticky Floating Navigation Menu (Without a Plugin)
Another method is to add custom CSS code to your theme. If you make a coding mistake, then this can cause many common WordPress errors, so it isn’t recommended for beginners.
If you haven’t added code to your site before, then take a look at our guide on how to easily add custom CSS to your WordPress site.
First, you need to visit Appearance » Customize to launch the WordPress theme customizer.
Next, click on ‘Additional CSS’ in the left-hand menu and add the following CSS code:
#site-navigation {
background:#00000;
height:60px;
z-index:170;
margin:0 auto;
border-bottom:1px solid #dadada;
width:100%;
position:fixed;
top:0;
left:0;
right:0;
text-align: center;
}
This will create a navigation menu with a black background. If you want a different color, then change the hex code next to background. For example, using background: #ffffff will give you a white menu background. If you’re not sure what hex code to use, then you can look at a resource such as HTML color code.
You’ll also need to replace #site-navigation with the CSS ID of your navigation menu. To find this code, simply follow the same process described above.
After adding your code, click on the ‘Publish’ button at the top of the screen. Now, if your visit your WordPress blog or website you’ll see the sticky floating navigation menu in action.
Depending on your theme, sometimes the navigation menu may appear below the site header, instead of above it.
In this case, the sticky navigation menu might appear too close to the site title and header, or even overlap it.
If this happens, then you’ll need to add a margin to the header area using the following CSS:
<pre class="wp-block-syntaxhighlighter-code">
.site-branding {
margin-top:60px !important;
}
</pre>
Just replace site-branding with the CSS class of your header area. To get this information, simply use your browser’s ‘Inspect’ tool and follow the same process described in Method 1.
Now, publish your changes and the navigation menu will no longer overlap the header area.
We hope this article helped you add a sticky floating navigation menu to your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to increase your blog traffic, and our comparison of the best WordPress page builder plugins.
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.
Paul says
Where do i leave the 5 Stars…..thank-you very much!!
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Jess says
Thank you so so much for this helpful post!!! So clear and easy to follow.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Ivaylo says
Great practical tutorail. I did Method 2 and it worked instantly, however when I open the website on mobile, the buttons from the menu have vanished. Anyone knows why or how to solve it?
Cheers!
WPBeginner Support says
If you haven’t done so already, we would recommend checking with the support for your specific theme to see if it could be a conflict with your theme’s CSS
Admin
Serena Richardson says
Hello,
How do you create a sticky floating menu down the right hand side of a page rather than at the top, so it moves down as you scroll down.
Thanks!
Serena
WPBeginner Support says
That would be adding a sticky widget which we have a recommendation in our article below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-create-a-sticky-floating-sidebar-widget-in-wordpress/
Admin
Tom Browne says
Worked instantly. Thank you
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome
Admin
simran says
level of perfection and the way of present the information …thanks you..
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our guide was helpful
Admin
Theo says
Where do I find out the id of my navbar?
Can’t find it.
WPBeginner Support says
To do that you would use inspect element. We have a guide on how to properly use inspect element below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/basics-of-inspect-element-with-your-wordpress-site
Admin
Natasha T says
A lifesaver, can’t thank you enough.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome
Admin
Tam says
Hello!
Thanks for your help! It worked like magic :D.
I learn a little CSS and tried to make my nav sticky from a free theme (GeneratePress) but didn’t work. (I tried “position: sticky;” in CSS), but thank your code that helped me to fix it
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our article was helpful
Admin
alexandre says
Just what I was looking for! Great plugin.Thank’s
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad you found our recommendation helpful
Admin
Guy Bailey says
Many thanks for your help – just a small q; the background of my menu is transparent when scrolling down. Any quick fixes of tricks to add a solid colour behind it (white in our case)?
WPBeginner Support says
It would depend on how your menu is set up but you can use inspect element to find the object that you can set the background-color property to: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/basics-of-inspect-element-with-your-wordpress-site/
Admin
Manish says
Thank You. When Wpbeginner writes a blog post on a topic, it is bound to be helpful.
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our content has been helpful
Admin
Everest says
Thanks so much.
You made my day.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad we could help
Admin
Tony Chung says
The CSS code worked and I did have to add a margin to the header so the whole title would display. My menu bar stretches across the top but the menu buttons start at the left and stop in the middle. How do I move the buttons to be centered on the page?
WPBeginner Support says
That would vary from theme to theme the specifics, but you would normally need to modify the CSS. You can test changes using inspect element: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/basics-of-inspect-element-with-your-wordpress-site/
Admin
Chinedu says
Wow, This works perfectly.
Thank you
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our solution worked for you
Admin
Gillian Davies says
I have a list of books in a table. I have imported the images of their front covers into Media, now I want to have the images pop up as a viewer scrolls down the list. Similar to a row hover, but how do I do this in a table created in table maker?
Raul says
How can i make this fixed navigation menu scrollable?
So i used it for a sidebar but when the sidebar it is too long it doesn’t fit on the screen and i cant scroll it down.
Rushikesh Thawale says
Hello,
How did you write the code LIKE A CODE in this post? I mean how to show HTML codes like this in a post?
Thanks.
Tara says
You’ve probably found out by now, but for those searching, how to show your code on your post use the html character for the opening bracket on the html tags < ; without the space.
WPBeginner Support says
That is one method but for this, we’re using the second method in our article here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-easily-display-code-on-your-wordpress-site/
Admin
Cesar says
Great post! your CSS code works for me
dani says
Alain says
Very usefull !
thank you.
amin says
Also you can “z-index: 999xxxx” for logo or any element that you want put it on navbar
Sujith Reghu says
I want to know how to add a sticky menu inside a WordPress post or page. Like for a long post, the headings and sub-headings of the post itself to be presented in the sticky menu so that a reader can easily navigate from one section in the post to another. Thanks…
Zac says
thanks for the tutorial!
what i need is a little different, i need a ‘mini-menu’ to appear when you hover on the menu … so it doesn’t show until you hover .. like a drop down
if you could make this tutorial i would appreciate it.
amin says
you can use a mega-menu plugin or uber menu plugin, but you can make it without plugin, by css or jquery, like bootstrap3 menu