How do I get my top navigation to work the way I need it to?
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Hi there. I have the “Custom” ELEMIN theme, and my blog is: http://www.21homestead.com
Concerning my top navigation, I want to have drop-down menus from the following ‘categories’ (About, Stay, Play, Pamper, and Contact)… I do not wish for those 5 categories to have a link or page associated with them. I simply want to hover my mouse over them, and then the drop-down appear (or something comparable).
As of right now, in order for someone to get the “Contact” information, they would have to click on the word “Contact,” in order to reference that page (and i can tell from the site statistics that people are not getting the information they want).
For example: I would like for users to hover over the top of “Contact,” (with no link to anywhere) and select “Office Information” (linking to a page) from a drop-down menu…. How can I accomplish this?
I hope this makes sense. If you could PLEASE help me fix this as soon as possible, i would REALLY, really appreciate it!
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Hi there,
I think I understand what you’re talking about. You don’t want the primary menu item to be “wasted,” instead you’d like for it to just be a placeholder and you’d like all of the submenu items to be where people go.
Unfortunately there’s no way to create a main menu item which doesn’t go anywhere, but what you can do is create a main menu item which is just a link. You can point that link back to your main page or even towards whichever page you’d like.
So in your example, you could create a Link with the title of “Contact Us” which goes to http://21homestead.com (or http://21homestead.com/contact/) and then as submenu items you could have both an “Office Information” link which goes directly to that page as well as a Questions and Feedback page.
Does this answer your question?
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Yes I could do that, but ideally that is not what I would like. I think it would be unorganized for the user to have to bounce around, link to link, to find what they want.
Can you think of any other way to accomplish what I am asking? I will spend the time to do it correctly, I just need to know how.
I tried creating a different menu system, using the “custom menu” function… but again, it leaves the top level completely blank. When I click “Contact,” it gives me a “Nothing Found. It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help” error message.
Perhaps I am forcing a “blog” to act more like a “web site”…
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I wouldn’t necessarily want people bouncing around either.
Let me ask you this (so we’re on the same page):
What exactly would you like to have happen when you hover over the “Contact” menu and what would you like to have happen when you specifically click on the “Contact” menu item on your ideal site?
This way I can see if we have the ability to provide exactly what you’re looking for! :)
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When I hover over “Contact,” I would like it to open the drop-down menu.
I do not wish to have “Contact” clickable, or to have the word link to anything. I just want to hover over the word, and have it open the menu.
If this is not possible, can you provide me with other alternatives to accomplish this? Otherwise I feel like I will have to re-work my menu system…
Thank you!
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OK that clears things up!
While you cannot have the top menu item be unclickable, there is a trick so that whenever you click on it, it will always return to the same page that you’re on.
So if you’re on the page:
If you click the Contact link it would “work” but it would take you right back to:
The way to do that is to go to Appearance >> Menus and to make any top-level menu item a Link. When you’re creating the link, remove the “http://” and just put in a “#” (without the quotes). Put the Navigation Label whatever you’d like to have appear in the menu and press Save. That will work for you!
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Ah hah! OK. Much better. I know its not the 100% correct way to accomplish it, but this will work for now. Thank you!
Looking ahead… can I keep the top navigation menu where it is, and when I click on “About Us” (for instance), can I have the sub-page items populate on either the left-hand or right-hand side of the page? Like this site: http://www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/paper/index.html
Notice how I am on the top-nav “fine paper”, and then all my “fine paper” sub-page menus populate on the left-hand side. In the future, I think I may move to this model…
Thank you for all your time, I DO appreciate it. If you could explain this one last thing for me, I’ll stop bugging you!
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Heya! I’m glad that will (mostly) work for you!
In regards to the example which you provided, we don’t have anything which will quite meet those needs, however we do have a couple of thing which will come close.
We have some themes which have custom menu areas which go down the side of your blog as well as across the top. One theme which immediately comes to mind is “Oxygen.” When you go to one of the menu options however, it won’t stay expanded though. It will always just give the same appearance of the top menu items.
Another option is the Custom Menu widget which you can use in any theme which has sidebars. That will give you an always-exploded view of your menu tree. That way your visitors can see what options are where on your site. Again, their current location is not highlighted, however this seems to be closest to what you’re looking for!
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