When building a website with WordPress, one of challenge for a beginner can be creating a menu. It is also challenge for web designer when we discuss the layout with our clients, because not everyone is familiar with words like “global navigation”, or “sub-menu”. This article is a guide to help you understand more about the menu in WordPress and how to create them.

Types of menus in WordPress

Menu in any website is essential. It displays the information that you have and guides your reader there. Without proper organization and arrangement,  your website would not have much value as it should. Let look at some of words that we will come across.

Menu

When you have set of different information displayed and linked to specific section, it will be a menu. User would be able to navigate your website with its help. For this reason, it’s better to keep it short and simple.

SUB-MenU

When you have a menu, there are times that you want to show only the broad category and detail bit more. This is where creating a “sub-menu” will be useful. With WordPress, you can actually create more than just one level (multilevel). Again, to make you website user-friendly, it should be created when necessary, short and simple.

Sometimes there is bit of confusion, with “Drop-Down menu”. It’s a same thing but, drop-down is a visual effect (often used to display the sub-menu).

GLOBAL NAVIGATION MENU

Some people call is simply “global navigation”.  It’s normally placed in upper section or left side of main page. The reason is simply because people read from top to bottom, from left to right. Global navigation should have links to all pages, and continues to display in all pages.

LOCAL Navigation MENU

This is opposite of the global navigation. It’s a navigation menu within the specific contents or pages. For example, in our blog section, there may be menu displaying category, or published year.

It is bit confusing if you mix with word “side bar”. Side bar is a location, local navigation (placed in side bar) is a function.

How to arrange menus in WordPress

There are many tutorials on how to arrange or put menus on WordPress website. Personally, I found this support page of WordPress.com very useful.

Hope this information helps you too. Good Luck Coding!