1. Go to your dashboard and click on Appearance/Menus on the left.
2. Click on Create Menu and name it where it says Menu Name. You are going to place the item you want in your navigation bar under here. In the last post you made a few basic pages. You will find these on the left-hand side in the list under Pages.
You can also see your categories over there. If any of them is closed, click on the small arrow to the right and it will open up and show all your pages or categories.
3. To get them across to the Menu side, tick in the box of the one(s) you want and then at the bottom of that section, click on Add to Menu. Now look over at your Menu area and it/they will be showing there. You can reorder these by clicking on them and dragging them into position.
While you are dragging them, you will see that you have the possibility of positioning them slightly indented from the one above. This would create a dropdown menu on your navigation bar under the main one which is above and fully positioned to the left. You can even have a sub menu to that submenu, if you want. You can stack them how you want. But for now you will want your Home Page at the top, which will show up on the left of your navigation bar, then place the About Me one next with the Contact Me last, which will appear furthest to the right in the navigation bar.
4. Go over to the right and click on Save Menu.
How to set up a Home page for the navigation bar
1. Click on Links on the left above Categories.
2. In the URL field, put the URL to your blog.
3. In the Link Text, write Home.
4. Click Add to Menu. It will end up over on the right-hand side at the bottom. Drag it to the top.
5. Go over to the right and click on Save Menu.
How to get this menu onto the navigation bar
1. Now go to the top and click on the Manage Locations tab.
It will say Primary Navigation Menu and maybe your theme has a Secondary Navigation Menu as well. But for now we have set up one navigation menu. That’s all you need right now.
2. Click on the little arrow where it says Select a Menu and you will see the menu name you just created. Click on it.
3. Click on Save Changes at the bottom.
Go to the front end of your blog and your navigation bar will show all the pages you put on your menu.
So, remember that to get items onto your navigation bar, it is a two-step process. First you create the page or category and then you go to the Menu area and add them.
Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU! I’m ashamed to admit it, but menus were a mystery to me. Thanks for the clear and concise tutorial!
You are welcome, Andrea. They are not intuitive at all and yet such a fundamental part of a blog.