Custom Menus feature in WordPress Themes

These days many bloggers and professionals new to web technicalities, prefer WordPress. Probably its clean interface is what makes it popular. For a regular user, not much accustomed with complex web jargons, WordPress websites certainly look way less daunting than most of other customized websites based on complicated programming languages. More and more people are taking to the idea of putting together their own websites, completely owning their pool of data and content. Since WordPress tutorials and instructions are simple enough for most to understand, today it has become very much possible for users to create websites that look clean, nice and adequately reflect our ideas or line of work.

A lot of confusion hovers amongst users, about creating WordPress Menus. However, with every next version, WordPress interface is getting increasingly user-friendly. Likewise, WordPress 3.6 has made the backend interface of Menus, much more organized and thus easy to use.

A good many themes offer the option of custom menus from where you can create and manage your own menus. Does your theme template support multiple menus and the facility of assigning those to multiple locations? Choose fantastic WordPress Theme by Catch Themes, at a ridiculously reasonable price, which offers these options. So now we’ll see how setting up the Menu, works in this one.

Create Custom Menus

Go to “Appearance => Menus”. The process has been divided under two tabs, “Edit Menus” and “Manage Locations”.

Create Custom Menus
Create Custom Menus

On top there is the option to “Select a menu to edit” or “create a new menu”. Ofcourse, you need to “create” before you “edit”. What you need to know is you can create as many “Sets” of Menus as you wish and alternately display them or display at least 3 “Sets” at a go, in 3 different locations, namely, Primary, Secondary and Footer Menus. You do this through “Theme Locations” at the bottom right of the “Edit Menus” tab, or through “Manage Locations” next to the “Edit Menus” tab.

To the right hand side, above the “Menu Structure”, you have a box where you can type in “Menu Name” and “Save Menu”. When you do this, you categorize a “Set” of Menu for your WordPress Site. To the left you can see, Pages, Posts, Links, Categories. Any of those can go into your Menu items. All you need to do is select them and they appear under “Menu Structure” to your right. With Links, you type in the URL, and in “Link Text” you type in a name (any name) that you would like to appear on the Menu (and lead to the link). Under “Menu Structure”, you have the flexibility to drag, drop and arrange items on top of each other, exactly in the order that you personally prefer.

You can tick the box that says “Automatically add new top-level pages to this menu” for any new “Set” you create, if that is convenient for your purpose. The option is available.

Usually, people use the same “Set” of items for the Primary and Footer Menus. This way, even if the page is long, when you scroll to the bottom, you can still change pages from the Footer without having to scroll all the way up. However, you can choose a completely different Menu “Set” for the Footer too if you wish. Secondary Menu is located right under the Primary Menu and you can have another different “Set” displaying here, as according to your need.

Custom Menus used in Catch Box Pro WordPress Theme

Catch Box Pro Menus
Catch Box Pro Theme uses Primary, Secondary & Footer Menus

One more thing that would perhaps interest you.  There is the option of creating Child Menu under the Parent Menu for any “Set” you create. How? Just go to “Appearance => Menus => Edit Menus => Menu Structure”. Under “Menu Structure”, you will have your selected “items” that make a particular “Set” of Menu. You can drag an item below, a little to the right of the one above it. This is how you create a “Parent” and a “Child” Menu. This applies for all three, Primary, Secondary or Footer locations.

Hopefully, all this helps you to play around with your WordPress Menu options much better. More later!

Custom Menus Screencast

34 thoughts on “Custom Menus feature in WordPress Themes”

    1. It’s not possible by default. For that either you need to find plugin which does that or you need to build child theme and add different custom menus.

    1. It depends on the theme you have choose. For example: IN Adventurous Pro theme , you can hide the submenu items in mobile view.

    1. We haven’t take of you blog comment. But yes the blog comment has to be manually approved to display there. So, it will take little time to show up.

  1. I somehow changed the styling for my primary menu–hover background area is not as big as it was and covers only the length of the label. I can’t find any listing of primary menu in style.css. How can I correct?

  2. I cannot get rid of the title for my menu that says ‘pages’. How can I change this? Is this because it is a free version?

    cheers!

  3. Hello!
    It seems that I have big problem with creating menus on my website.
    In the header menu it seems that I cant have more than 17 pages in it.
    And in sub-menu only 13 pages in it.
    Is there an limit of how many pages I can have in one set of menu?
    I have the theme Adventurous installed. Up to date and all. And I am really happy about that theme, so I don’t want to change.
    And when I try to change something in the menu set, delete or try to get in more pages it always be a white blank page coming up when I press the Save button. And I have to reload the page and than nothing is saved! (Both head-menu and sub-menu do the same).
    Is someone knowing whats the problem is cause this is driving me crazy!!
    Really happy for fast anser!
    Thank you,
    Linda Nordlund

    1. Hello Linda,

      This problem is found only on few servers. This is more of server and WordPress core file related issue. See this trac of WordPress https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14134 and as per they will fix it in WordPress version 4.0. This is not theme related issue. So, either you need to wait for WordPress version update to fix this or you need to ask your hosing server to add following code in your php.ini file.
      suhosin.post.max_vars = 5000
      suhosin.request.max_vars = 5000

      Regards,
      Sakin

      1. Hello,
        thanks for quick answer! 🙂 Appreciate it!
        Good to hear that its not theme problem. It was exactly that I wanted to know. Thanks.
        I have already ask the server host about this and they say they have max_vars 5000. So this is not a problem. I have them also in a support messages. They said that they probably could be theme related but now I know it isn’t and thats perfect.
        Do you know when they will have a update.on WordPress Is it soon?
        And is it more people who have the same problem as I have?
        Thanks again for answer!
        Kind regards,
        Linda Nordlund

        1. Hi Linda,

          Now sure about when WordPress development team will fix this issue. Also these problem are related to few servers only. So, I guess for now it’s better to deal with Server, which is in our hands but WordPress we need to wait and don’t know the wait time.

          Regards,
          Sakin

          1. Thanks for answer.
            Now the have updated WordPress but the issue remains and it driving me crazy.
            When I try to do anything with the menu everything freezes when I press save…
            Ok, I just have to wait for the server-host to find the problem and fix it!
            Thanks for answer!
            Regards,
            Linda

      2. Hello agian,
        thanks for answer so quickly.
        My server host says that the max_vars already are on 5000. So its not that problem…
        Do you know what els it could be?

        Then I have an other question:
        In the Promotion Headline Option can i choose 2 language. Like have one on my native language and then do translate on english cause I have my webpages translated on english too? Cause now when you go in on http://frangipani.se/en everything in the headline are in Swedish. And everything els are in english. Hope you understand and I appreciate your time to answer me.
        Thanks you,
        //Linda Nordlund

        1. Hi Linda,

          Sorry not aware of that. For headline, please use our support forum. This is blog post for menu.

          Regards,
          Sakin

    1. Hi Denis,

      That is easy. You just need to drag your menu item to the right under the parent menu. Watch the video above in this post.

      Regards,
      Sakin

  4. Hi Linda,

    WordPress haven’t fixed that issue which exist only in few server. So, its best to contact your hosting server to address this. This will help you and all the site in that server. So, tell them to fix it by adding following line in php.ini file
    suhosin.post.max_vars = 5000
    suhosin.request.max_vars = 5000

    Also send this link https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14134

    Regards,
    Sakin

  5. Dear Sakin,

    I’ve recently created a new post. However, it is not showing up under “menu”. I would like for it to be a child to a particular parent, but since it’s just not there, I’m lost.

    I’ve rebooted. I’ve refreshed. I’ve searched.

    Any insight is much appreciated!

    1. Hello Cathy,

      Post are not shown in default by Menus. So, after you go to your menu from “Appearance => Menus”. You need to click on “Screen Options” that is there in the top right corner and then check “Posts”. Then only it will show the list of posts in your menus list. Then you can add that posts in your menu.

      See this screenshot which show where is screen options in menu to show additional options http://www.pinterest.com/pin/548594798331771327/

      Regards,
      Sakin

  6. Hi Sakin,

    I would like to know if it is possible to have a drop down menu in catch evaluation free or is it only pro version future?

    Regards,
    Natalia

  7. Hello,
    I would like to know if possible to use 2 menus
    First at the top/center menu (not a problem)
    But I want the second menu to the left side, how ? Is it possible ?
    Thank

  8. Can I move the Main Menu to underneath the featured Header Image on the Page as opposed to the top if I ‘Go Pro’?
    Thank you. Beautiful work there.

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