Sites@Duke: How do I customize my menus?

Many new WordPress themes offer a way to customize their menus. Here’s how it works:

1. Login to your site and visit the Dashboard view.

2. Click the Appearance menu and select Menus.

3. Check to see if your theme allows Custom Menus. Look in the Theme Locations box (see image below):

If the text states that your theme supports at least 1 menu, then you can use the Custom Menus options to customize your overall menus on your site. If it doesn’t, you can still use this tool – but the custom navigation will have to be placed in your sidebar as a Widget instead.

4. Click the ‘+’ button to create a new set of menus. Give the menu set a name.

5. If you’ve already created Pages and/or Posts on your site, you can use them to build up your custom menu. For example, if I want to add several of my site’s pages to the menu, I can place a check next to them in the Pages box, then click Add to Menu. The pages will show up under the new menu. Click ‘Save Menu’ then enable it under the Theme Locations box by choosing it from the drop-down menu as your ‘Primary Navigation’ and clicking Save.

You can rearrange menu items by dragging and dropping them as needs be (meaning, in most cases, the top most item will appear on the left of your navigation on your page). You can also drag items under other items to create subpages. To illustrate, here’s the WordPress site using the navigation in the images above: