05.11.10
Custom Menus WordPress 3 – Dashboard
With very little work you can create professional, multi-level menus for your site from the WordPress Dashboard. This post deals with the rudimentary initial setup. (That is, the plain vanilla setup that allows your menu to show on the Twenty Ten themed site.)
The new menu function lets you combine posts, pages, categories, tags and links in your menu. To start then you must have already created the posts, pages, categories, etc. you want to include in your menu.
If you create categories for your menu and they’re not associated yet with anything, they’ll show up on your menu structure and generate 404 page-not-found if selected.
To create the menu structure go to Appearance / Menus on the Dashboard. This is a bit of mis-location since this is a tool that allows you to set the menu structure; the appearence of menus isn’t handled here, but I wasn’t responsible enough to comment on this whenever it was suggested so it’s under Appearence.
Once you get to the screen, go to the Screen Options drop-down in the upper right & click everything. When you decide which items you need for your menu you can reduce clutter by unclicking, but I’ve found that if it’s there when you start you have a shot at remembering it’s existence when you want it.
Select Items To Be included In Menu
Next, name your first menu by typing over the box that says “enter menu name here” (duh). In each category (pages, posts, tags, etc. )
select the items you wish to be included on you menu and press add to menu button.
My menus were happier when I hit the save button (Create Menu) but that may just be a bias left over from days when I taught programming and had the power fail 3 seconds after I discussed the importance of saving one’s work frequently. So nice to have feedback on who’s actively following along.
Arrange menus by dragging and dropping them into the order/position you want -
The top/left-most item will be the first item in your menu. Items indented under that will be sub-menu items (children). If you want more sub-levels, just indent further under the appropriate parent.
The next item left-justified will be the next item on the main menu. Again, just create more sub-menu items like an outline.
Save (Create Menu – now updated to Save Menu)
Configure Individual Menu Items
On the new menu bar there is a description of the menu item type (page, post, category etc.) and a carot for a drop down box. If the carrot does not show a drop down box, you forgot to save your changes before proceeding to the next step.
