Frustrated First Time User: Side menu
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I’m testing basic functionality of WordPress before making any financial commitment but I’ve been going round in circles trying to make a side menu. I’ve been in WP Admin/Appearance/Menus to make my menu but Widgets only allows me to put it as a Navigation Menu in the Footer. Any advice or am I experiencing a ‘feature’ of a free test?
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Hi there, you’ll want to be sure you’ve got a theme that includes a sidebar widget area, like one of these:
https://wordpress.com/themes/free/filter/right-sidebarThen, add a Custom Menu Widget, and select the menu you’ve published.
Let us know if you need more help! And please include a link to the site you need help with, too, so we can see what you’re seeing.
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Hi supernovia, Good tip about selecting a theme that includes a sidebar menu. Next problem is to show different sidebar menus on different pages (and no sidebar menu on the home page). After doing some research, it seems I need to set up theme templates but this customization does not seem to be available on WordPress.com (at least on the free plan I am testing). Can I solve this customization problem with WordPress.com or do I need to switch to WordPress.org?
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Hi there, there are themes that will not display the sidebar on the homepage and others that will. You can also change the page template on WordPress.com, you will find these settings in the editor when working on the page:
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Hi fresatomica, Thanks for your advice and link. When I get to Page Attributes under Document Settings for any of my pages, there is no Template drop-down only the Parent Page drop-down. Is the absence of the Template drop-down related to the Theme I am using (Twenty Sixteen), or the free plan I am testing, or something else?
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Only some themes have page templates, and the Twenty Sixteen theme doesn’t have that feature.
But you can achieve what you want with widget visibility settings: Set all your widgets to not display on the front page, and the page content will automatically become full-width.
You can also use those visibility settings on different menu widgets to have different menus appear in the sidebar for different pages.
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Hi, I got the structure I was looking for using Twenty Twelve (main menu with 4 pages, 2 different second level sidebar menus with 20+ pages). From the latest advice from kokkieh I can probably do the same with Twenty Sixteen. However I have been warned that what I have may not look good on mobile devices and that I should use a modern “responsive” theme. Any advice?
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All our themes are responsive and they will adapt to the size of the screen so you can choose the one you like best.
Click on the address of your site just below My Sites and you’ll be able to test this: -
Hi fresatomica, That’s really helpful! In Phone display my sidebar menu becomes a “footer” menu which is OK. I think I’m almost good to go but first need to add content.
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In Phone display my sidebar menu becomes a “footer” menu which is OK.
Yup, that happens because to have both the content and the widgets on such a small screen, the font would be tiny and not at all easy to read.
Have fun blogging and if you need more help, you know where to find us :)
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