How To Set Up Your Menu In WordPress In A Few Easy Steps

The navigation menu! Wondering how to set up a WordPress menu, easily and properly?

It’s one of the most important parts of a website and blog, making it easier for site visitors to discover the content on your site.

For beginner WordPress users who have just started a blog, it can seem tricky at first. However, once you understand the basics, it’s fairly easy.

It’s also an important step right after you start a blog.

I’ll take you through the key steps for creating a simple navigation menu and share a few tricks for customizing it to your preferences.

You’ll have your menu up in a matter of minutes!

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Before we start, are you a new blogger who’s trying to figure it all out? I have a FREE course for you that answers many of the questions you may have. Start here!

How To Set Up A WordPress Menu In 3 Steps

Site visitors want an easy experience finding the information they’re seeking on your site.

In a study done by KoMarketing, 61% of users say easy navigation is the most important characteristic of a website.

It’s the first thing people usually see when a site loads, so having a well-organized navigation bar is important.

Imagine if you were trying to find an About Me page to learn more about what the blog is about and the person behind it. It’d be difficult to find it was in the footer of the site.

Let’s get started – this shouldn’t take long. You’ll feel confident your site visitors will have a better experience when checking out your site.

1. Open Up The Menus Option In The WordPress Dashboard

First, you have to find where you can set up your menu. It’s hiding in Appearance on your WordPress dashboard.

NOTE: Some themes will have “menus” in their Customize options. I find it easier to manipulate directly in the Menus section as noted here.

2. Create A New Menu/Edit An Existing One

Next, you will need to create a new menu. If there’s an existing one, you can modify it by jumping to step #3.

When you are creating a new one, you should see something like this:

1. Add the menu name (I usually put something like “Main”)
2. You can leave the rest as is.

Now you can jump to the next step of how to create a WordPress menu: customization.

3. Add Pages/Categories To Your Navigation Menu

To set up a WordPress menu so that it takes the site visitor through a “flow”, it’s now important to choose the pages and categories in an order that makes sense.

Here’s what it will generally look like (minus my entries).

To add your navigation bar links, here are the following steps:

1. Click Pages in the dropdown menu on the left hand side of the menus dashboard (right under where it says Add menu items).
2. Click on the pages you want to add: Home, About Me, Blog (Posts Page), Contact are the usual ones you will see in the main navigation bar. I would add them in this order.
3. Click on Categories. Add them to the menu. You will find them under the last page that you added to the menu. This gives easy access to your category archives on specific topics.
4. When you click and hold a category item with your cursor (use your mouse button to hold), you can move it up and down on the menu list and “nestle” it under “Blogs”. This creates a dropdown menu. You can do this for all items until you’re happy with their placement. Menus are hierarchal so you can create a dropdown order as you wish.
5. Save your menu. It’s now live!

Aside from Pages and Categories, you can also add specific blog posts and custom links (e.g. a link to your Facebook group or external shop).

READ MORE: How To Correctly Set Up Blog Categories & Tags

Set Up A Navigation Bar For Easy Access

I can’t stress it enough: make it easy for site visitors to find information.

Your core pages, category archives, and blog content should be found within about two to three clicks maximum.

This is the best order to set up a navigation bar for a blog is:

• Home
• About
• Work With Me (if you’re monetizing your blog, add a dropdown with specific pages here including a testimonials page)
• Blog (add categories as a dropdown)
• Shop (if you’ve got one)
• Favourite Products/Tools (if you’re monetizing through affiliate links)
• Contact

If you have a core page that showcases your best content, you may want to call it “Start Here” and add it to the beginning of the navigation right after Work With Me.

Once you’ve created your menu, test it on somebody who hasn’t seen your site yet. Ask them to give you feedback on how the pages flow in their order and if the information is easy to find.

Can You Update Your Navigation Menu?

Of course!

You can change what appears in the menu at any time. You can also change the “labels” – the text – that appears.

In some cases, you have to rename the items in your menu to be shorter so everything can fit in easily and aesthetically.

You’re All Set To Wow Site Visitors!

This is one important step to setting up your new blog.

Another thing to consider is adding a menu to the footer with core legal pages that are a must-have on your website.

These are the Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions pages, which protect you legally and financially from lawsuits and FTC fines.

You can get lawyer-written legal page templates for your blog from my favourite Legal Template Bundle – affordable and covering your legal needs.

Now that you’ve got your menu set up, it’s time to focus on writing awesome blog posts!

Here’s a list of great lifestyle topics split up into specific niches to get you started.

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