When running a WordPress membership site, a forum in WordPress, or allowing users to submit posts, you may come across situations where you want to show different navigation menus to logged in and logged out users. For example, you may want to show logged in users a link to their profile and a link to sign in or register for users who are not logged in. In this article, we will show you how to show different menus to logged in users in WordPress.
Creating Multiple Menus in WordPress
In WordPress even if your theme has one menu location, you can still create multiple menus for the same location.
Go to Appearance » Menus, create two menus logged-in and logged-out.
After creating the menus, add this code in your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin:
function my_wp_nav_menu_args( $args = '' ) {
if( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$args['menu'] = 'logged-in';
} else {
$args['menu'] = 'logged-out';
}
return $args;
}
add_filter( 'wp_nav_menu_args', 'my_wp_nav_menu_args' );
That’s all you will see that your logged in visitors will see the logged-in menu and non-registered or logged out users will see a different menu.
This method allows you to create two different menus for your users so that you can freely update your menus for logged in or logged out users. There are other ways to do the same thing. For example, if you just want to add login and logout links to your navigation menu then you should add custom menu items in WordPress navigation menu.
We hope this article helped you show different menus to logged in users in your WordPress site. For questions and feedback please leave a comment below.
Works great! I have the problem that I have to menus at the top: A headliner menu and the main menu. When I use the Code and the user is logged in bove menus switch to the logged-in menu. How can I adjust the code so that the headliner menu remains the same?
For what you’re wanting, you would want to take a look at our article below:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-conditional-logic-to-menus-in-wordpress/
Thank you very much!
You’re welcome
Would be much easier if you could do it for a specific menu item rather than an entire menu. What would someone with 499 menu items have to do?
We would not recommend that many menu items as that would be far too many for someone to navigate through which would likely cause an SEO issue if your menu links don’t add value for your visitors
100%. Just configured it with Sahifa Theme and works like a charm.
Keep up with this good work.
Thank you!!
this is so helpful, but is there a way to display a username and avatar which can act as a container of other profile menu items, as a drop-down menu?
The path you showed is well and good only for just showing custom menus. But what if i want to show my content to a specific logged in user based on his interests. That is in detail, like various deals sites, when we login and save our interests, the next moment we see deals only on that specific topic. Can we make that possible using WordPress plugins.
Hey there, thanks for the great work. I have a question about multiple user roles.
So I have two main menus, Menu 1 and Menu 2.
I would like all users (logged in or out) to see the main menu unless they have the userole of “Alt”, in which case Menu 1 is replaced by Menu 2.
How would I go about doing that?
It is working, thanks
@ERICLEE You can create a child theme to prevent that from happening. I just added this code and need to do the same thing.
can it possible to add the menus in the subscriber profile accept than the home page these menu pages not show on the home page, just on the every subscriber profile. if it possible then please guide me, and tell me how use any pluging for this.
can it possible to add the menus in profile of the subscriber in wp site , if it possible so please anyone guide me what i do and how use any pluging of this work.
How can the same be achieeved on a multi-language members site? For example show different menu for users logged in in english and a different menu for users logged in with german?
Hi Yuda,
If you are using a multilingual WordPress plugin then this should be handled by the plugin. You will essentially need to provide translations for your multilingual menus.
i have added log in menu and logout menu, how do i configure the page for login and log out ???,,
First I thought of a plugin. Gotta quit thinking like that.
Then I saw your post and was sold.
Thank you for posting this, you helped me very nicely.
Thanks so much for that. Works perfectly.
Hello,
This totally works!
But it change my footer menu too.. is there a way where my footer manu stay the same?
So, I have 2 menus. One for the public and another that I would like employees to see when they are logged in. The employee menu would replace the main menu only when an employee is logged in.
Here is what I am currently using in my functions.php file
// Set the Role as a body class
function add_role_to_body( $classes ) {
$user = wp_get_current_user();
$user_roles = $user->roles;
foreach( $user_roles as $role ) {
$classes[] = ‘role-‘ . $role;
}
return $classes;
}
add_filter( ‘body_class’, ‘add_role_to_body’ );
***Here is what I added for CSS***
/* First hide the menu items for non “employee” user */
#top-menu li.menu-for-employee {
display: none;
}
/* Show the menu items for the “employee” user */
.role-employee #top-menu li.menu-for-employee {
display: initial;
}
When I log in as an employee both menus are showing.
Thanks in advance.
its not working for me. It display default menu after I add this code, even my primary menu gone.
Hi Guys,
I nice tutorial but i was wondering could you use the same approach to replace a responsive menu at a certain screen size?
I have two menus but would rather have just one responsive menu at 768 px by replacing the menu with another.
Thanks
Awesome job with your guides. I am building my first wordpress site and I am finding your site incredibly helpful in guiding me along, thank you.
I really wanted to show different menus for logged in users (like ‘edit profile’) and for logged out users and that brought me here. The code you shared works alright for me. I now have two menus which are showing up nice. However, the last part of the code, add filter string, I believe, is messing me up a little bit. Now, another menu is showing under the sidebar widget. The ‘logged-in’ menu. I am using sydney theme and I have tried to no avail to remove this unnecessary menu. Any idea on how I can make it not display?
Hi Pet,
Please check Appearance » Widgets page to see if you have a custom menu added as a widget there. If it is there then you can just delete that widget.
What genius! It worked! Thanks for the wonderful tip!!
Me too have the same problem..Please help me..but I dont have widgets..Thank you..!
Works like a charm…
Thanks for that.
Btw i love theses short tutorials
Hi can you help me please? I have another trouble please? I need to hide one menu to all and allow only the vendors to see what I have to do please? what is the specific code i have to use please?
When you modify the functions.php like so- wouldn’t it get wiped when you upgrade your WP next version ?
Yes, it will get wiped out when you update your theme. To prevent this you can create a site-specific plugin.
Will this work for a Buddypress install? Thanks.
the function set secoundary menu also? i only want to set primary menu. how to do that
this above function set secondary menu all i want to set only header menu?
how to do that
Hi,
thanks a lot for this solution, I’ve applied and woks perfect and saved me installing one more plugin.
this is the code for replacing existing menu to logged user menu by addming location top-menu and with menu loggedin no need else statement with this
add_filter( ‘wp_nav_menu_args’, function ( $args )
{
if( is_user_logged_in() && $args[‘theme_location’] === ‘top-menu’ ) {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘loggedin’;
}
return $args;
});
———————————————————–
function my_wp_nav_menu_args( $args = ” ) {
if( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘logged-in’;
} else {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘logged-out’;
}
return $args;
}
add_filter( ‘wp_nav_menu_args’, ‘my_wp_nav_menu_args’ );
———————————————————–
Now how do i get it to work with
—————————————————
———————————————————————————————————————-
Please Advice
If I want to hide a page from logged out user from a single menu what have to do?
You can lock pages to hide them from logged out users. There are several plugins that make this very easy to do. Users Ultra comes to mind.
Everything worked perfectly.
However, I still have the issue of a repeated primary menu in the secondary navigation menu section which I can’t seem to remove (I don’t have a secondary menu set up).
I’m having the exact issue. The change reflects in the secondary menu location out of nowhere and I too don’t have a secondary menu setup. :/ Please advice how to deal with it.
Thanks in advance.
LISTEN!!!
Most of us, uses themes.
So first go to the functions.php of your theme.
Search with navigation as keyword.
In case of Shopkeeper theme..
==================================================================
register_nav_menus( array(
‘top-bar-navigation’ => __( ‘Top Bar Navigation’, ‘shopkeeper’ ),
‘main-navigation’ => __( ‘Main Navigation’, ‘shopkeeper’ ),
‘footer-navigation’ => __( ‘Footer Navigation’, ‘shopkeeper’ ),
===================================================================
This is how you look.. so pick the one which is primary, In my case, Its “Top Bar Navigation” hence used “top-bar-navigation”
I used the following code and worked like a charm!!!
This is my way of thanking the author.
Good day !!
Here’s what worked for me with WP . I used this to create a specific primary menu for logged-in Buddypress users. It will NOT affect my footer menu OR social media menu for any visitors, so everyone sees the same secondary menus regardless of whether they’re logged in or not. This is based on all of the comments above (HT to Fransiska!).
Added the following to my Child Theme’s functions.php file:
// CHANGE MAIN MENU =ONLY= IF MEMBER IS LOGGED IN
function my_wp_nav_menu_args( $args = ” ) {
if ($args[‘theme_location’] == ‘primary’) {
if( is_user_logged_in()) {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘logged-in’;
}else{
$args[‘menu’] = ‘logged-out’;
}
}
return $args;
}
add_filter( ‘wp_nav_menu_args’, ‘my_wp_nav_menu_args’ );
Don’t know what happened why my comment, but –> ” <– these are correct!
thanks!! help me a lot
Hello,
I added this code (probably wrongly) in my functions.php within my theme in wordpress editor and now I have a constant 500 server error. Even after removing the code.
Before this i attempted to create a site specific plugin but that didnt work. Could you please tell me if the snippet requires an opening and closing bracket?
If so how do i do that?
My host cant help me now and they’re requesting I pay a programmer to help me for 50Eu per hour. Please help me. Its urgent.
I am still logged into wordpress but what ever I click I get the 500 error with this specific error.
PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ in line 1194.
This is because I pasted the snippet after all the text in the functions.php file.
I then removed the snippet to see if that would fix it, via editor and FTP and I still get the error.
I look forward to hearing your response.
Kind regards
It depends on where you are adding the code. If there is a closing PHP tag before it then you need to add a php start tag like <?php
If this code is the last thing in the functions file then you don’t need to add a closing tag.
If you have multiple menu locations and want to apply different menus for each location you can use the code bellow:
function my_wp_nav_menu_args( $args = ” ) {
// Primary menu location
if( ‘primary-main’ == $args[‘theme_location’] ) {
if( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘Primary-Logged-In’;
} else {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘Primary-Logged-Out’;
}
return $args;
}
// Secondary menu location
if( ‘secondary-menu’ == $args[‘theme_location’] ) {
if( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘Secondary-Logged-In’;
} else {
$args[‘menu’] = ‘Secondary-Logged-Out’;
}
return $args;
}
}
add_filter( ‘wp_nav_menu_args’, ‘my_wp_nav_menu_args’ );
This does not work, anyone that does know the proper code if you have 2 or more menus?
Perfect bro .Its work …. awesome work
This was almost too easy!
Thanks alot for the simple article.
In this way I don’t have to install any plugin..
I think it is better to use IF MENU plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/if-menu/
Creating two separate menus like this, use has to create/update menu twice.
Hi Gaurang,
I’m curious to know why you feel using the plugin is better, than coding the functions.php file? I was told a while ago to watch how many plugins are actually used for a wordpress site, and the code above seems simple enough; minus the having to monitor every time your theme updates….
Thanks,
Great, how I can use it to show menu for logged user that have certain role?
This worked so simply and neatly. I didn’t think it would be this easy. Thank you!
this is awesome tried it. works. but i also would like to redirect by role
is that simple or much harder
Thanks. Working with menu functions for the first time.
Creating the WTG Portal Manager plugin which will allow a portal to be defined very quickly. Every portal having it’s own menu. The plugin make the relationship between portal and menu clearer plus provide other unique options.
how can i show different posts to different users??
thnkx for the help.. but what if i want to show different users different posts on my site.. is there any way to do that using coding??
Under Appearance > Menus you need to choose a location for your menu. Seems like there are two areas on your site where you can add menus. So you need to create two different menus and then assign a location to them.
what would the revised code for this be, if there was a distinction of ‘Primary’ and ‘Top’?
$args[‘primary-menu’] = ‘logged-in’;
$args[‘top-menu’] = ‘logged-in’;
else
$args[‘primary-menu’] = ‘logged-out’;
$args[‘top-menu’] = ‘logged-out’;
?
WordPress will not let me put 2 menus in my “top header” location. The code you provided works, but it changed ALL of my menus to the logged in or out, and is not displaying my normal nav menu
I have a top menu as well as a site menu (under logo). How would I change the code to switch just that top menu. Right now, ALL my menus change.
You saved my day! thank you
OMG, this made me laugh it was so simple… thank you!
Illustrative and easy, thank you so much.