Setting up and Managing Your WordPress Menus

Setting up and Managing Your WordPress Menus

Melbourne WordPress User Meetup, April 2015  

@chrisburgess  

Outline

•  Importance of user experience (UX), information architecture and

navigation

•  Impact of theme on navigation options available

•  Creating pages and ordering

•  Creating a WordPress menu for your theme navigation

•  How to add custom link to your menu

•  How to add a category to your menu

•  Creating WordPress menus for widget areas

•  Menu plugins and mega menus

WordCamp  Brisbane  30-­‐31  May  

Importance of User Experience (UX), Information Architecture

(IA) and Navigation

Why should you care?

Because it will affect your conversions.

Before you start building…plan

•  Do your research, see what others have done

•  Keep terms simple and intuitive to the user

•  Avoid confusion with labels (e.g is it ‘Shop’ or ‘Shop Locations’)

•  Use standard conventions (e.g ‘Contact’, ‘About’, ‘Products’ etc.)

•  What are your categories? Map them out by parent and child.

•  Use keywords/keyphrases if natural (e.g for SEO and usability)

•  Avoid multi level menus. Try and stick to one sub level menu.

•  Use hover effects like colour or highlight indicate where the cursor is.

•  Think responsive. Review how your menu looks on the mobile

version of your theme. Commonly you’ll see these collapsed into a

single ‘menu’ button or a ‘hamburger’ menu

“While content is supposed to be unique, surprising and exciting,

navigating to it is supposed to be as simple and predictable as

possible.”

Anastasios Karafillis, Smashing Magazine

Impact of Theme on

Navigation Options Available

Different themes offer different navigation locations – check documentation for this

•  Twenty Fifteen theme navigation locations

•  Genesis – Magazine Pro Theme

Creating Pages and Ordering

Before you create a menu - create pages

•  Note depending on your theme and settings, sometimes pages are

automatically added to your menu, you can override this in the menu

section we cover next.

Good practice - order your pages to match your navigation to help you easily reference your content

1  2  3  

0  0  0  

Creating a WordPress Menu for your Theme Navigation

Go to Appearance > Menus

Give your menu a name > Create Menu

Tick the pages you want to add > Click add to menu •  You can search by ‘most recent’ or ‘view all’ or ‘search’ to find the page you

want to add

Click and drag to reorder the menu items > Save Menu

To create a sub level > drag the menu item to the right

Second  Level  

Third  Level  

Customising the Menu Label

•  If you click on the arrow and drop the item down you can edit the menu

text

Select the theme location for your menu

•  If you want your menu to appear in the main navigation area tick ‘primary

menu’

You can also manage your theme navigation locations here…

Then you’ve created your menu!

Screen  OpBons  

Plugin - CMS Tree Page View

•  https://wordpress.org/plugins/cms-tree-page-view/

How to Add a Custom Link

Menus > Links

•  Enter URL

•  Create a label for the menu item

•  Add to menu

Then it will appear with your pages in the Main Menu we created

You can create custom links for…

•  External URLs

•  Pages

•  Categories

•  Tags

•  Custom Post Types and Taxonomies

How to Add a Category

Simply click on Categories > Tick > Add to Menu

Creating WordPress Menus for

Widget Areas

Go to Appearance > Widgets

•  There is a default ‘Custom Menu’ widget you can use

Click to drag into a widget area

•  Give your menu a name e.g ‘Browse by Category’

•  Select the menu you have already created back in ‘Menus’ from the drop

down list of available menus

Then we have a category menu on our sidebar

Mega Menus and

Menu Plugins

Mega Menus

•  Drop down or ‘fly out’ from main navigation as a multi column sub level menu

Mega Menu Example - Home Page

•  Before hover on menu item

Mega Menu Example - Home Page

•  After hover on menu item

Plugin – Uber Menu

http://wpmegamenu.com/

Plugin – Max Mega Menu

https://wordpress.org/plugins/megamenu

More?

Mega Menu Example - Home Page

•  WordPress Codex

•  https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Menu_User_Guide

•  https://codex.wordpress.org/Appearance_Menus_Screen

•  https://codex.wordpress.org/Navigation_Menus

•  Essential Navigation Checklists for Web Design

•  http://www.sitepoint.com/checklists-web-design/

•  Efficiently Simplifying Navigation, Part 1: Information Architecture

•  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/12/03/efficiently-

simplifying-navigation-information-architecture/

Thanks!

•  I’ll upload these slides to Meetup.com

•  Any questions, contact me on:

•  http://chrisburgess.com.au

•  @chrisburgess