Menu problems
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Hi Russ,
If none of the custom menus I have created are set to be used on my site then how do we explain that the top navigation menu that shows on my homepage is a menu that contains the items I just listed above, items I’ve manually added to what you say is a custom menu?
Your theme automatically adds all of your site’s pages to the top navigation menu. It displays them in the same order (and with the parent/child relationships) that you see under Pages > All Pages in your site’s dashboard.
I need to add two things: first the order of the items in the custom(?) menu on my home page is supposed to be set by the order I arrange them at Appearance/Menus in the Menu Structure pane. Right? Well, the order the items appear in the menu on my home page is Alphabetical, not the order I have them set to in the Menu Structure pane. How is that explained?
If you’d like to have the menus that you set up under Appearance > Menus appear on your site, in the order you put the pages there, you’ll need to enable those menus on your site. Otherwise, none of the changes you make there will affect your site.
You can enable them by heading to the Menu Locations tab and choosing the menu there. For example, for the “Top primary menu” you can select “My Top Nav Menu.” Once that’s done, the “My Top Nav Menu” you created will appear on your site in the exact order you selected there.
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Thanks. I think I’m making some progress with your help, but I’m not yet where I want my blog to be.
I can see that using Appearance/Menus?Manage Locations I can set the menu Custom Menu “My Top Nav Menu” as the top navigation menu, but then I lose all the children to the items in that menu.
For example, I have a menu item titled Campground Reports. As you would expect it is a Page I created of the same name. Additionally I created many other pages, each one being a report on an individual campground and I have given them each as their Parent the page Campground Reports. I did this with the thought that these reports on the various campgrounds, all the individual pages would then show in the top navigation menu as second level pages under the item Campground Reports, but they do not. The are nowhere to be found. They are lost to the blog reader.
I want the menu item Campground Reports to reveal all the individual pages, all the individual campground reports I’ve written as second level menu items when the reader rolls over Campground Reports in the menu. How is that accomplished?
Next, I’m getting to have so many campground reports that I want to begin organizing them by state so that the top level menu item is Campground Reports and when somebody rolls over that they will see as secondary menu items all the states in a list, and then as a third level I want to present the reader with the campground reports of campgrounds in the appropriate state? I am completely baffled as to how this is accomplished. To my brain it is completely unintuitive in WordPress. None of it is obvious or can be found anywhere in the docs in a way I can comprehend. Do I do all this without a Custom Menu? Do I create a list of blank pages each one named with the name of a state and each one assigned as its parent the page Campground Reports? Then do I assign to each individual campground report the appropriate state as its parent? I can see how that would work but it presents an implementation issue.
How do I do this without disturbing my blog’s functionality for several hours while i create the new structure? Can that be done… easily?
Thanks again.
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Hi Russ,
I can see that using Appearance/Menus?Manage Locations I can set the menu Custom Menu “My Top Nav Menu” as the top navigation menu, but then I lose all the children to the items in that menu.
Your custom menu will show exactly what you’ve added to that menu under Appearance > Menus. To show your child pages, you’ll need to add those pages to the custom menu. You can make them child pages by dragging them to the right underneath their parent page, as shown in our guide to creating sub-menus.
Next, I’m getting to have so many campground reports that I want to begin organizing them by state so that the top level menu item is Campground Reports and when somebody rolls over that they will see as secondary menu items all the states in a list, and then as a third level I want to present the reader with the campground reports of campgrounds in the appropriate state?
Do you want to have actual pages for each state, or would you prefer to have those just as items in your menu without corresponding pages? There are different ways to set up your menu depending on which of those you want. :)
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It would seem perhaps easier to administer a menu by selecting a parent for an item to appear in it as opposed to adding each item to a list. For example, if Campground Reports is the top item in the menu if I have to create 50 separate pages, one for each state, and add them to the list in the Menu Structure pane at Appearance/Menus, I would than have 51 items in that list, just for that one menu item. If I then have to add the individual campground reports to the appropriate states there may be hundreds of items in that list and just scrolling through them would be a real task. Alternatively, if I could simply assign parents to menu items, assigning, for example the a state page called Alabama the parent of of Campground Reports, and do so for each state, I wouldn’t have a long list of items to deal with in the Menu Structure pane. If I could then assign for the individual campground reports I create the parent of Alabama or whatever the appropriate state might be and have those show at the third level so the menu looked like this when the reader rolls over Campground Reports:
Campground Reports
Alabama
Rose Trail Campground
Arkansas
Blue Ridge Campground
Sassafras Campground Resort
(etc.)That’s what I’ve been trying to accomplish. Right now I don’t see any need to actually have pages for the states except to make them appear in the menu. Late on I may wish to write some comments about a state for people to read, but that may never come to pass.
Also, right now I have a Campground Reports page and each time I create a new campground report I add a paragraph from it and a photo from it to that page and link it to the full report. That creates extra work I’d rather avoid. It’s an unnecessary layer of complexity that I have not been able to figure my way around with this software. In other words, if I could eliminate the Campground Reports page in favor of the menu item of the same name with the structure shown above that would make blogging significantly easier. On a related note, whenever I write a campground report, add an excerpt from it to the Campground Reports page, I also create a Post duplicating that excerpt. So now I’ve created the campground report, an excerpt from it on the Campground Reports page and a duplicate excerpt of it for a Post. Phew… I’m tired just thinking about all that work.
I don’t see any way around creating an excerpt to be used as a post. If there was a way to shortcut this piece of work that would be nice. I don’t want to send entire campground reports as Posts which would just waste a lot of bandwidth. I’d rather not do the same thing twice; make an excerpt to be used on the Campground Reports page and another to be used as a post, and I’d rather not have to maintain a separate Campground Reports page just for the sake of having a menu item of the same name. I’ve been doing the same thing for other top level menu items. It’s too much duplicative work. How do I better deal with this?
Many thanks.
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Hi Russ,
I’m thinking about this duplicate effort you mentioned here:
On a related note, whenever I write a campground report, add an excerpt from it to the Campground Reports page, I also create a Post duplicating that excerpt. So now I’ve created the campground report, an excerpt from it on the Campground Reports page and a duplicate excerpt of it for a Post.
You can avoid some of that duplicate effort and the complication of maintaining a large menu by relying solely on posts and categories instead of static pages. For example, each of your campground reports could have a “Campground Reports” category — that way you could simply link to that category’s Category Page to show each of the new posts you write.
You could also make child categories for each state, so that each post has the “Campground Reports” category and a state category. That way visitors can sort the posts by state to narrow things down if they prefer, and you can use a Categories Widget to display those state categories without having to put them all in dropdowns in your site’s menu.
Do you think that would work as a solution for your site? I’m afraid that if you continue to use static pages for this content, you’ll be stuck with a good deal of manual work updating your menu and pages each time you add content to your site.
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I not really following you here. Relying on Posts and Categories? I understand that I can assign categories to posts. I’ve done that and the categories appear above the post when published. You wrote I could link to that categories category page and my brain goes “Huh? what does that mean? How does one do that? Link? Link what to what how?”
If I followed your suggestion (of course I’d have to understand it first) would I have to send out complete campground reports as posts? I don’t want to do that. My reports often have a number of photos and I don’t want people who aren’t interested in a given report to be stuck paying for a bunch of bandwidth when they aren’t interested.
Please take a look at this site <http://www.wheelingit.us/> which is set up very much like Ild like to set mine up. it looks like it used categories but it may also have static pages. I don’t know how to tell. Each campground report has an excerpt on the page for the state it’s in. I also really like the camping map and would like to know how that is done.
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When you add a category to a post, your theme automatically creates a category page — that’s a page that shows all of the posts in the category. For example, here’s the category page for your site’s “Campgrounds” category:
https://russontheroad.wordpress.com/category/campgrounds/
The site at http://www.wheelingit.us/ uses category pages like this. It has a top-level category called “RV Park Ratings” with this category page:
http://www.wheelingit.us/category/rv-park-ratings/
And then individual states are sub-categories (underneath the “RV Park Ratings” category). For example, Alabama has the “AL” category with this category page:
http://www.wheelingit.us/category/rv-park-ratings/al-rv-park-ratings/
The first step for setting that up is to create all the categories you want to use. You can add new categories to your site under Posts > Categories in the WP Admin dashboard.
You can hover over each category on that screen and click the “View” link to see that category’s page.
Then, in your site’s custom menu, you can add each of those categories to your site’s menu. That way, whenever you publish a post with one of those categories, it will automatically appear on the relevant category pages.
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OK, I like that idea, but what of all the published Pages? How do I get those into my menu? I can’t go back and add categories to them because they are Pages not Posts.
Also, how do I avoid emailing Posts containing complete Campground Reports when all I want to do is email an excerpt
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Hi Russ,
Rachel is out for the weekend so thought I’d pop in. :)
You can add Pages to your menu, very similarly to how you add Category Pages:
Any page that is published (and not private) will be in that Pages listing for your Custom Menu settings.
Also, how do I avoid emailing Posts containing complete Campground Reports when all I want to do is email an excerpt
There are two ways to do this, a custom Excerpt or the More tag. Sounds like the Excerpt is the best tool for your question:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/excerpts/
-Alex G.
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Thanks.
I don’t see a way to include a photo with a manually created excerpt. If that’s the case then such excerpts are not useful to me. Is there a way to include a photo?
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The excerpts will not include photos, but the More tag will still display photos in the notification email.
The restriction there is that the email’s content will always be the first part of the post, whatever is above the More tag.
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